


A Cricket in Times Square

by Strummer_Pinks



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 22,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5620369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strummer_Pinks/pseuds/Strummer_Pinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gold refuses to go with boyfriend Archie to the New Year's party and Archie is mistified as to why.  Though Gold tries to keep the truth from Archie, sinister secrets from the landlord's past seem determined to raise their ugly heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shalako](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shalako/gifts).



> So anyway, I was inspired by Shalako's works. Initially Gold/Cricket seemed kind of a bizarre pairing, but I really loved those stories and reread them loads of times. I decided in tribute to write something in a similar vein with Gold and Hopper with similar back stories to the way they are in Shalako's stories "Rent" and "Scar Tissue" although there are a few differences. There are a few more chapters to follow. Hope you enjoy. 
> 
> XXXXXXX

Archie went to bed with a vague sense of sadness after the Storybrooke General New Year’s Eve party. Why? His life was better than it had ever been. He had a great dog whom he doted on and just this past summer he had reconnected with his parents. It had taken a lot of guts and soul searching, but he was willing to begin a relationship of sorts with them, as long as they agreed to certain boundaries. They had asked for his forgiveness and he had given it whole-heartedly. He had a large two bedroom apartment in a fourplex made out of a charming, turn of the century red brick school house. The neighbours were friendly. He’d settled in well at his new, better paying job in child psychiatry at Storybrooke General. He’d taken a chance coming here and for all intents and purposes it had turned out better than he could have hoped. All the other doctors and psychologists at the party had been complimentary, friendly. People here liked him. Best of all, here in Storbyrooke, even though it was a small town, he could live openly, without judgement. People were broad minded here. For the first time in years Archie was in a serious, exclusive relationship with another man, the sort of man he could see himself marrying in time, spending the rest of his life with…at that man wouldn’t even go with him to a simple office New Year’s party. 

And for the life of him Archie couldn’t understand why. 

Secretly he wondered if Gold was ashamed of him, even though the other man had sworn up and down that he was not. 

But wasn’t that Gold all over, though? Archie thought. A man of secrets. How could he, in full possession of his senses and a degree in psychiatry deign to give his heart to a man who wouldn’t even tell him his first name. 

Archie, using his rusty pick-pocketing skills, had had to sneak a peak at Gold’s driver’s license to learn that Gold’s first name was “Malcolm.” What in the world was so embarrassing about that? His own name was Archibald, for pete’s sake. If anyone should be hiding his first name it should be him. 

When Archie saw Gold the morning after and slyly greeted him with a “Good Morning Malcolm,” Gold’s eyes nearly popped right out of his head. Archie had expected annoyance, but Gold’s reaction…was odd. There had been real terror behind the Gold’s eyes, before the landlord’s features set themselves into a feral snarl. Through clenched teeth he spit, “Get out.”

“What is the big deal? Your first name is Malcolm? So what? What are you Rumplestilskin? You think if someone finds out your real name you’re going to disappear into the ground? What are you, four?”

“Malcolm isn’t my name. I don’t care what it says on that. My real name is Gold. I only answer to Gold, okay?

“Sure whatever.”

Gold had tried to make amends for his outburst by being extra thoughtful the rest of the day, but his sudden anger gave Archie some distinctly weird vibes. 

Archie had planned on ending the relationship. He had even picked up the phone to call Gold to tell him it was over, but then he found himself talking to Gold about other things, unable to say what he’d initially planned on. The truth was, no one had ever made love to him the way Gold had. No one ever had made him feel pleasure that intense. No one was so funny, so snarky, so surprisingly sweet to him as Gold. And no one had ever tried to win him back the way Gold had. He’d never been important enough to anyone for them to make an effort. 

And yet Gold still refused to hold his hand in public or come to parties as his date and Archie for the life of him couldn’t understand why. 

“Come on, people must suspect,” Archie tried to reason with him, as they took Pongo for a walk in the desolate December park over the weekend. “You’re a fifty something man living alone. You dress in three piece pin stripes suits, with sleeve garters, might I add, and you spend your weekends looking for antiques. What part of that doesn’t scream gay to you? I mean even your house is pink!”

“It’s salmon!” insisted Gold. 

“Pink!” 

“Whatever! Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter whether they think I’m gay or straight or if I like fucking your dog,” said Gold. 

“Hey now don’t bring Pongo into this.”

“Point is, they’ll hate me whatever I am. I’m the bastard penny pinching landlord, not to mention slimy defense lawyer who gets all the scum in town off for shit like drunk driving and spousal abuse.”

“So then why--?”

He laced his arm wearily through Archie’s and leaned into him as they walked. “You’re a good man Arch, a kind man. You deserve to be loved, to have friends here, a community to be a part of. Not to be hated, to be put in danger…”

“But why would I—“

“You have to understand, you won’t have any of that if they know you’re with me. I’m not a good person, Arch. I’ve hurt people.”  
Archie held Gold at arm’s length and raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm, sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re not exactly the Incredible Hulk here. What’d you do? Brain someone with your cane?”

“I’m serious!” Gold nearly shouted. “If someone was to retaliate—“ 

“And now you’re just being paranoid.”

“Archie, you don’t really know me,” said Gold desperately. “Where I come from!”

“Scotland?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Then tell me, where do you come from?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Because you won’t tell me!”

“I told you, I’ve done bad things.”

“We all have, Gold. My parents were thieves, confidence tricksters, I stole with them, helped them trick people out of their money.”

Gold, usually so unflappable, seemed surprised by this. Archie could see he’d never thought it of him. “But you were young,” Gold protested. “You didn’t—“

“I turned them in, my own parents.”

“Ah.”

“For years I felt horrible about it, but I came to understand that I was placed in an untenable position for kid. I worked it out, through talking about it. Some of the people we scammed, I knew who they were. I found them again, looked them up, when I got old enough, asked for forgiveness.”

“And they gave it?”

“Yes, much more readily than I would’ve ever suspected. I talked to my parents eventually. We forgave each other. In fact, in the end, the hardest person to gain forgiveness from turned out to be myself. I once read something, a quote I use often in my practice: We all carry our prisons with us in our own heads.”

“That’s very nice,” said Gold dismissively. “But I’d rather a virtual prison than a real one.” 

And no matter how much Archie argued, he couldn’t budge Gold from his position. 

Archie was almost willing to accept it, to let it pass without a word, when he discovered that Gold was going to a different party, one thrown by his former law partner, in a restaurant off Times Square in New York City, the night of the ball drop no less.

That night Archie cried a little in the shower, before he went to bed. It had been a long time since he’d done that. It took a long time for sleep to come. 

The next morning Archie looked himself in the mirror and said to his reflection, “So? You were a fool for love. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. It’s not your fault he lied to you. The best thing you can do for yourself Archibald Hopper is go to that hospital party and have the best fucking time of your life.”

So that’s exactly what he did. He made sure to throw himself into every party game, to have his picture taken for every department Facebook picture smiling from ear to ear, to be his funniest, most gregarious, most charming self. He’d even got a champagne flavoured kiss from handsome new resident heartthrob and ladies’ man Victor Whale at twelve o’clock. Who knew Victor of all people, actually swung both ways and had a thing for gingers? 

And yet through it all, his traitorous mind kept harkening back to Gold, wondering what he was up to, if he was having fun at the party without him. That little bastard. 

Telling himself he didn’t care anymore, Archie turned over in bed and went to sleep. 

The phone by his bedside rang several times before Archie shook himself awake. He glanced over at the clock on his dresser, 4 AM. Who in the hell would be calling him now, he wondered. His foggy brain tried to remember if he’d somehow mistakenly taken call at the hospital, as he picked up. 

“Hello?”

“Arch-ch-ch-ie?” stuttered a voice on the line.

“Yes?”

“It’sh me, G-g-gold.”

“Gold? It’s—“

“I kn-kn-know it’s late,” gasped the voice on the other line. “B-b-but something’s happened. P-please Arch, I need your help.”


	2. Chapter 2

The elderly Volvo slammed on the breaks in front of Gold’s Victorian mansion and Archie leapt out, freezing January wind cutting through his pajama pants like a knife. He wrapped his scarf more closely about his face as he tromped through the snow, eyes scanning the snowy lawn. 

No sign of Gold anywhere. Archie turned on his flashlight and bounced the beam over Gold’s neatly manicured hedges up to the front steps.

All the snow made him think of their last time together, walking Pongo in the park, before they’d started arguing. There was a fenced in area for dogs there. The air had been crisp, the sun shining brightly. The sky was a perfect blue, as only the sky on the coldest days could be. Gold’s pointy nose glowed red in the cold. 

Gold sat down on a bench as Archie let Pongo off his leash to run around the enclosure. When he came back to see what Gold was doing, he noticed the older man looking down at a small patch of snow by his feet with a hint of a smile. Archie looked over and saw that Gold had made a smiley face between his feet using the end of his cane to make little round impressions in the snow. 

“Who’s that?” asked Archie.

“Wait,” said Gold and used his cane to sketch in a large nose. “Doesn’t look like anyone you know?”

“Nope,” said Archie stoutly.

“Hmmm.” Gold picked up a slender twig, a thinner, more precise snow-writing implement. He quickly traced out a little stick body, one stick arm holding a tiny stick cane. Then he circled the facial features to make a head. Then he added a little line coming out of the face’s mouth, to show the character was speaking. Last of all, he bent at the waist over the snow, and with a look of intense concentration somehow wrote something in beautiful flowing script. 

Archie peered down, wondering what sort of joke Gold had drawn himself saying, but what he read instead in the speech bubble were three simple words: “I love Archie.”

“How about now?” asked, Gold fidgeting with the buttons on his coat to mask his nervousness.

Archie stared at the message in the snow in awe. “You love me?”

Gold looked at him warily as if Archie would flee if he admitted it. “Uh-huh,” he nodded and looked up, large eyes suddenly so childish and worried to be admitting it, that Archie just laughed with joy. He wrapped his arms around the smaller man, a glow lighting him up, warming him from head to toe inside. Even in the throws of ecstasy, in bed with Gold, he’d never felt so happy. He picked Gold up and twirled him around up over the snow. 

“If you sing ‘Let it Go’ I swear I’m going to kill you!” grumbled Gold, as Archie put him down gently on the bench again, but Archie could tell his friend was really happy.

And now, mere days later, here he was walking through ankle deep snow at Gold’s place bouncing his flashlight beam across the yard, desperately looking for any sign of life. 

At last he spotted in some indentations in the snow, like footprints in the process of being filled in by the falling flakes. Where in the world was Gold? The tracks led around the back to the shed. The shed door was open, with more tracks leading away from it, now with something being dragged alongside them leading around to the far side of the house, by the bushes. A shining aluminium ladder reflected back the flashlight’s beam. Archie tracked the beam up it. The ladder leaned against the side of the house below a half open window second story window. 

It was then that he noticed a black clump of a shadow, like a lump of coal in a white Christmas stocking. 

A figure was slumped on the far side of the ladder below the window, half sunk in the snow. “Gold?” gulped Archie. 

There was a weak moan and Archie’s heart leapt up with joy, so terrified had he been that he would find Gold dead. 

The snow had settled in high drifts up near the walls of the house. Archie pushed through them to reach Gold. The older man’s teeth were chattering, his lips blue. Archie stared. Gold didn’t even have gloves on, or a coat, just one of his trademark black suits. He’d stuck his hands under his armpits to keep warm, but he was shivering harder than anyone Archie had ever seen. 

“I should call an ambulance,” said Archie, removing his phone from his pocket. 

Gold’s half-frozen eyes just glared in horror. “No!” he moved one cold-clumsy arm up and struck the phone from Archie’s hand into the snow. 

“But—“

“I’m alright-t-t!” insisted Gold feverishly through chattering teeth. “Just c-c-c-cold, please. I just need to get inside.”

Archie looked up at the ladder.

“You could’ve broken your—“

“I know, I know,” dismissed Gold. “But I didn’t. I just need a hand up.”

“Please,” whispered Gold and reached out his hand, in a plaintive way Archie had never seen him use before. 

Archie fished his phone out of the snow and pulled Gold up to his feet. Gold hissed as he put his right foot down, freezing tears springing to his eyes. “Sonavabitch,” he swore. 

As Gold breathed into his face Archie could smell the strong alcohol fumes of a serious night’s drinking. 

“You’ve hurt your foot,” said Archie.

“Really? I hadn’t feck-ck-cking noticed!” giggled Gold.

“Come here,” sighed Archie and wrapped his heavy winter coat around Gold’s narrow shoulders. The cold cut through Archie’s sweatshirt and pajama pants like a knife. He could only imagine how freezing Gold was, out in just his suit for God only knew how long. Standing in the snow on one leg, balancing on Archie’s arm, Archie could see Gold wasn’t even wearing boots. He wondered if Gold could make it to the car on his own power. “Where’s your cane?” he asked. 

“D-d-dunno.”

“C’mon then,” he said and picked Gold up. 

“Wait!” Gold thrashed weakly. “I don’t wanna be carried!” 

“Tough, I’m not letting you freeze to death, asshole, now stop squirming or I’m gonna drop you!” Archie yelled at him, more frightened than angry.

Gold lay obediently limp in his arms, though he was still shivering dreadfully. 

“Now, do you think you can ride on my back?” 

“Hehe – hicc!” giggled Gold, but let Archie shift him onto his back.

“Now put your hands around my neck,” instructed Archie and he carried Gold back with him to the car. 

Once inside he wrapped Gold up tightly in his coat and turned on the heater full blast. He tried not to drive too fast on the way back to the house though he was dying to get Gold in front of his space heater with every blanket he owned wrapped around his shivering body. Gold kept passing in and out of consciousness, occasionally waking up frightened, begging Archie not to take him to the hospital. Archie just shook his head and kept driving.

They got back to Archie’s apartment and Archie realized they’d have another problem as Archie lived on the second floor of the fourplex. 

Gold stared at the steps up in dismay. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Archie. I just—It’s warm in here by the stairs. I’ll be alright, just leave me here, I’ll get a cab in the morning, I’ll—“

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Archie and heaved Gold up in his arms again. 

“I’m so sorry Arch. It’s such an inconvenience. I shouldn’t have—it’s just you’re the only person I could call. I’m sorry,” repeated Gold over and over again.

“Shush, it’s alright,” said Archie and stroked Gold’s hair. “No need to feel sorry.”

Gold sighed and Archie could’ve sworn he felt the smaller man snuggle his freezing nose into his shoulder. “Thanks Archie. I— I shouldn’t drink, I hate being like this, fucking useless. Can’t even get into my own bloody house.”

Archie unlocked the door and stepped inside the apartment. He could’ve held Gold to him forever, but his back was starting to hurt, even if Gold wasn’t particularly heavy. As gently as he could, he laid his friend down on his sofa, unconcerned with how his wet clothes might ruin the leather. His mind was consumed with worry and curiosity over how Gold had ended up like that. 

He’d obviously been drinking, but Archie suspected there was something more than drink behind him turning up at his own home sans coat, cane and keys. 

“Let me get you some towels and blankets,” he said gently, disentangling himself from Gold’s arms. 

As he rose to go a strangled word came out of Gold’s throat, as if dragged from the depths of his soul. “Wait!”

Archie drifted back towards the shivering figure on the couch. “What is it?”

“Don’t go. Wait.”

All his therapist senses told him that Gold had been running from something, perhaps had been running from something for a long long long time and tonight it had almost caught up with him. Now he lay on Archie’s couch shaking, Archie was certain, with something more than cold. He looked into his lover’s eyes and saw the pain there, pain that had little to do with his injured foot and knew what it cost the relentlessly self-sufficient and proud Gold, to plead with him to “wait.” He didn’t want to badger Gold, not now. Archie knew Gold would have to tell him himself, in his own time. 

Large brown eyes stared up at Archie out of the darkness, luminous black pools lit only by the light left on in the kitchen as thoughts shifted and tumbled behind Gold’s eyes, words chosen and rejected, a million things he wanted to say to this man who for some reason cared for him, but all he could do in the end was sigh wearily and say again, “Stay with me, Arch, please.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” 

“’M afraid,” murmured Gold, looking down and a tear of shame trickled down his cheek. 

Archie sat down beside him on the sofa and wrapped his arms around Gold. He shifted the smaller man onto his lap, where Gold fit surprisingly well. “Don’t wanna go back,” muttered Gold into Archie’s hair. “Not to that. I’ve c-c-come so far, please.”

Why was it always those “pleases” that broke Archie’s poor soft heart?

“No one will make you go back,” he whispered soothingly wiping the snow flakes from Gold’s frozen hair. Even though he had no idea what he was telling Gold he’d never have to go back to, Archie knew he needed to hear it. 

Gently he unlaced Gold’s left shoe and let it drop to the floor, massaged his small foot through his sock, warming it between his hands as Gold sighed. He moved to his right foot, unlacing the shoe as delicately as he could. Gold whimpered throughout, hissing as the shoe came off.


	3. The Night Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For the purposes of this story Storybrooke is located in Upstate New York, I know it is in Maine in the show, but I’ve already made Archie and Gold gay, so a shift in the town’s location really isn’t that radical is it?) Once again, check out shalako's works if you like this, because that's where these characters and their relationship, (and some of Gold's past) come from. This is my favourite of the fics, but seriously, they're all awesome:
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/5318180/chapters/12278135  
> XXXXXX

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Storybrooke was just two hours upstate, from New York City, so Gold would be taking a cab to the train station and a commuter train into the heart of the city. 

Gold was careful as always about what he wore to New York. He covered his body in well tailored layers. Standing in the full length mirror that was higher than he was tall, he examined his attire for any flaw in the façade of the well groomed, elegantly turned out lawyer and antiques dealer—when he was suddenly struck by the oddity of it all—that any single item of his current ensemble—from his Italian leather shoes to the bespoke suit and the thick lined wool coated hemmed at some expense to fall to the proper length on his smaller than average frame-- all the expensive clothes he wore cost so much more than what men once paid to buy his body years ago.

Indeed, what did his expensive clothes conceal? That the person inside them was still worth less than they were, even less now to be frank, street demand for a fifty something hustler with graying hair and a bad leg being virtually nonexistent these days. As for for the worth of his soul—wasn’t it ironic—that back when he was charging fifteen bucks for a blow job he knew himself to be a better, kinder, more innocent man than he was now, on this day when he was the guest of honour at a NYU Law School scholarship fundraiser. 

They had asked him to speak about the finer points of real estate litigation for prospective donors at $500 a plate and he felt like an imposter. How could he go? Surely they could see right through him? Maybe it wasn’t an honour at all, but a trick—a trap to catch him at last, to lure him out after all this time. With some effort he banished the paranoid thought. It was silly to be afraid now. After all, hadn’t all his worst fears come to pass long ago? And he remained. When circumstances like this arose, he got through it by telling himself he had nothing left to lose, so why be frightened? Only now he couldn’t quite believe. He did have something to lose now, didn’t he? Or rather, someone. 

Archie. He loved Archie and that’s what made the difference. 

He should his head to clear his thoughts. It couldn’t be that, it was just the contrast between his life then and his life now. The extreme difference lent everything he touched an unreal quality at times as if he could push his hand against a solid-seeming wall and it would flex and bend, as insubstantial as the soap bubbles he once blew for Bae. Good lord what would his boy say if he could see him now?


	4. The Night of the Incident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or...the Other Shoe Drops  
> certainly took me long enough didn't it? 
> 
>  
> 
> XXXXX

Gold screwed his eyes shut as the shoe came off. "Don't look, okay?" he said in a small voice.

"What? Why?"

Gold said nothing. 

“Please, you know I'm a doctor, I need to see if anything requires immediate medical attention. You're obviously in pain.”

Gold said nothing.

“If you bleed to death or get an infection from a compound fracture or something, I am legally responsible, you know! Let me examine you or I'm going to call an ambulance!”

Again Gold said nothing. His eyes were closed. Perhaps he had fallen into a drunken stupor. 

Archie moved to take off Gold’s sock and Gold's hand grabbed his wrist with surprising strength. Archie was pretty sure he'd have a bruise come morning, but he was damned if he'd let himself be man-handled by anyone, Gold included.

“Let go of me!” his ordinarily soft, accommodating voice growled. He pushed Gold back down on the sofa in a shivering heap and fumbled for his phone. 

"Archie, it's alright, don't call the ambulance. I have my own doctor," protested Gold.

"Really? Your own personal physician who’s on call at 3 am on New Year's Eve? Why am I skeptical?"

"Well..."

Archie tapped the number 9 on his phone. “It’s either me or the paramedics, take your pick.”

"Alright, alright!" Gold finally acquiesced.

"Thank you!"

"But just-- just the sock-- don't look at anything above here--" said Gold making an odd chopping sort of motion just above his right ankle, "Deal?"

Weary with Gold and his endless rules and secrets and pointless taboos, not to mention the late night craziness of it all Archie just sighed and nodded.

Gold looked up at him, dark eyes reflecting the single bright point of light from the kitchen lamp, intense and focused and fully in possession of the room once more: "Promise me?"

Archie sat down beside him, rubbing his hands over Gold’s numb arms, trying to work some warmth back into his bones and trust back into his soul. "I promise." 

Gold sank back with a sigh and pulled up the soggy cuff of his pant leg. "Be my guest."

Had there not been the threat of hypothermia and potential injury at hand, Archie would have capitalized on the sexual innuendo, the lifting of a garment to allow him to view what had always been private, the exposure of vulnerabilities indicitive of trust and deepening intimacy. The act was like that of a Victorian maiden lifting the hem of her skirt, his sentimental poetic brain supplied, but the pragmatic realist in him couldn’t help noticing something was missing, confirming his previous suspicions.

“What happened to your compression--?” 

"Enough with the annoying questions, just get it over with," snapped a tetchy Gold. 

Always one to break the mood, thought Archie and gently began to roll down Gold's sock. 

For a gay man, the most flamboyant thing, oddly enough, about Gold was his sock choice. Who'd have ever pegged him for a blue and white polka-dot socks kind of guy? And yet, there they were. His right sock, like the rest of him was freezing and soaked down to the last fibre.

"Someday you'll have to let me in on what the big frickin' secret is. You know I used to work at a VA hospital with soldiers just back from Afghanistan, PTSD cases, recent injuries, burns, amputations. Whatever you think I'm going to be so shocked by, I’m not going to--"

"Please just shut... up!" gasped Gold and the sock was all the way off.

Gold's ankle and foot were very white from being so cold and slightly swollen, though Archie thought maybe the cold was helping control the worst of the swelling. He was no emergency doctor, but his best guess was a slight fracture or bad sprain as the result of falling off the ladder. Beneath that however was an obvious long-standing injury and probably arthritis. Archie tried to probe as gently as he could, but even without touching it was obvious to him that at some point in the past, Gold had broken several bones in his ankle and foot, none of which had been properly set. He had seen things like that in some of the vets in the hospital who'd received inadequate or improvised medical treatment in places like Vietnam where there were often few medical supplies at hand. When new bone had formed over the poorly set breaks, the joint had healed into a permenantly twisted position which gave Gold his familiar limp. 

“Now place both feet on the ground,” said Archie/ 

“This is stupid,” muttered Gold but did as he was told, though he remained sitting.

Archie noticed Gold’s injured foot seemed to rest more naturally on its side than with the ball and heel flat on the ground, but it was obvious from the thick callouses he bore on that side that this wasn’t a recent development. Archie wondered how many years he’d been walking on the side of his foot like that and how much it probably hurt on a regular basis. 

"Why do you let yourself suffer like this?” asked Archie. “You could probably get it fixed, at least somewhat with surgery. Surely they could do something.”

“At a hospital, yes thank you, so I've been told," said Gold grimly. 

"But you--"

"Look, let's stick with our deal. Am I, in your professional opinion, in immediate danger of death or more serious injury?”

“Uh…”

“I mean, can we wait to take care of this mess until it’s proper daylight at least, without your conscience driving you to distraction?"

"Yes, but I think--" 

"Then there's all there is to it, thank you goodnight—“ said Gold. Quick as a wink he pulled his feet up under the the mass of blankets Archie had wrapped around him, lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. 

Surely, Archie would get the hint. But no, Gold could still feel the therapist’s shadow hovering uncertainly over him.

“Would you like something hot to drink?”

“No, just leave me alone,” grumbled Gold without opening his eyes. 

“Maybe an extra strength Tylenol? I have the kind with codeine,” 

Gold grimaced. He knew without something to help with the pain this night would last forever. "Yes, that—that’d be grand.”


	5. The Pink House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the Hans Christian Andersen papercuts I describe in this chapter do exist, (although since Gold is a fictional character he doesn't really own them). If you're interested you can check them out here:
> 
> http://visitandersen.com/paper-cuts
> 
>  
> 
> XXXXXXXXX

Archie went to the kitchen feeling decidedly disturbed as he pulled a dusty half empty bottle of twelve buck chuck he'd somehow ended up with after a friend's birthday party out of his makeshift wine rack that he felt a person of Gold's good taste would be morally appalled by. Although, he was starting to question even that assumption about the man. This whole night had turned his thinking about Gold completely on its head. 

Anyway, what did he care if Gold thought he was cheap? Fuck him. He needed some fortification. Because alcohol solved everyone’s problems. Right.

Archie pinched the bridge of his nose. What had he originally come in here for? Tylenol, right. Well, Gold could wait until he had his drink. Served him right for being so tight-fisted with his secrets, thought Archie petulantly. 

As the the first sip of sweet wine hit the back of his throat, an image bloomed unbidden in his mind, the little drawing in the snow, Gold's shy smile and the afternoon that followed. 

It was the first time Gold had brought him to his pink house on the edge of town. It was old for this part of the world, the last true Victorian house in town, Gold told him with pride. He’d bought it for a song, back when it was all run down. “I knew it had potential, no matter what anyone said,” explained Gold, lovingly stroking the stain glass panel set into the front door.

Slowly, over time as he built up the funds through various business deals and his law practice, he’d had it restored to its original glory and retrofitted with all the common modern conveniences, not to mention a few uncommon ones as well.

The foyer was not ostentatious. There was a narrow lobby paneled in wood, “a mud room” Gold had pronounced it, with the strangest papercut pictures in frames on the walls.   
“Hans Christian Anderson originals,” said Gold proudly as Archie peered at the tiny white paper figures pressed on a dark blue background. Swans, ballerinas, knights and wolves of miniscule size cavorted around intricately constructed trees, both rightside up and upside down, when he pulled back he saw the branches formed into the grimacing faces of imps and goblins. whose branches enclosed tiny scenes of clowns and knights with lances. 

Each small frame seemed to contain entire worlds of fairytale stories. 

“What do you think?” asked Gold.

“They’re wonderful,” breathed Archie as he moved from one picture to another, but Gold just took him by the elbow and like a late night TV commercial announcer said “but wait, there’s more.”

Indeed there was. Wherever he turned in Gold’s domain was something to intrigue the senses, to fascinate or please the eye. When Gold spoke about the history of his objects it was like hearing about the deeds of a great hero, who just happened to be a chipped tea cup or an eighteenth century French copy of a rare Greek sculpture. Gold had such a flare for it that Archie, who’d never thought much of antiques other than as a pastime to keep old people busy, much to his surprise, found himself hanging on his friend’s every word.


	6. Cabinet of Curiosities

Archie’s rented condo came complete with bland prints of the walls and basic, tasteful furnishings in blonde wood. He had yet to personalize it other than the addition of some reference books for his work and the numerous dog toys and large dog bed for Pongo. The important parts of Archie’s life were lived at his office. The office was where he kept the paintings from the Art Therapy program he used to run at the VA hospital and the meditation bowl, chimes and tools, he used in his mindfulness groups. There were full colour prints of Eastern Mandalas to help occupy patient’s eyes and minds so they could relax a bit while talking. Sometimes he found it was easiest for them to discuss certain difficult topics if they didn’t have to look him in the eye. 

Gold’s house though—it was something completely different, filled with items handpicked through years of antiquing, completely and utterly representative of its owner. What was displayed in the pawnshop was just the tip of the iceberg. Archie could see that Gold had held back his most precious finds for himself, like a dragon jealously hoarding his treasure. No that wasn’t quite right, he realized as he followed Gold further into his domain-- not everything he saw was a straightforward antique. Many of the objects were antique on the surface, but with modern working parts inside. Then there were those with new parts seamlessly grafted onto old ones, or old things repurposed to new functions in rather unorthodox ways. 

Modern conveniences like fridge, microwave, oven and warming drawer existed in the kitchen, but they were all panelled in such a way that at glance made you think you were looking at some intricately carved Medieval altar piece. 

Then there was the massive massive Delft ceramic bowl complete with blue figures of shepherds and shepherdess in what he at first took to be a strange looking closet. He blushed to realize that this was actually a urinal from the small flush button hidden in the recessed curve of the Shepard’s crook.

Everything here was like that—He was reminded of a Richard Scarry drawing or a Breughel painting--- wherever the eye wandered there was something beautiful, whimsical or oddly humorous to attract it. 

He imagined a person could never get bored in a house like this. Assuming Gold never looked at a newspaper or turned on a TV or computer all he’d ever see was beauty all around him—objects that longed to be touched and held, played with and investigated—objects that spoke of their owner’s sensual nature. Everything seemed to be made by human hands. Archie couldn’t detect a single grain of MDF or flat pack anywhere. Even the fabric of curtains, he thought, as he felt the golden braided fringes that brushed the ground—were braided and knotted into different patterns each strand individual.

It was appropriate that the house was Victorian for the interior, though it held objects from numerous time periods felt distinctly Victorian in it’s over-stuffed nature. Not a single space that could have housed a painting or wall-hanging lay bereft. There was even a genuine cabinet of curiosities at the end of the hallway by the stairs, below a tarnished mirror set in an opulently carved mahogany setting. He’d seen such things in museums but never in real life. His fingers itched to pull open every tiny drawer, each with its own little brass knob, each fashioned into a different type of shell or flower.

“Go ahead,” gestured Gold. “It’ll keep you busy while I take care of something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some examples of authentic 18th and 19th century cabinets of curiosities...http://www.antiques-delaval.com/en/items-sold/695-cabinet-of-curiosity-italian-walnut-and-marquetry-18th.html
> 
> https://thiswritelife.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/cabinet-of-curiosities-17/
> 
> I love the idea of having something like this.


	7. Chapter 7

Archie watched Gold, mischievous grin, hooded eyes and all sidle over to the staircase. “Wait a tick,” purred Gold. “I won’t be but a wee moment, don’t follow, yeah?”

“Scout’s honour,” said Archie with a cheeky salute and turned purposely away from the stairs as a show of faith that he wouldn’t be peeking.   
His gaze turned on an antique Swiss cuckoo clock hanging from the wall as it struck the hour. A set of tiny doors sprung open above the clock face and a miniature shepherd chased a flock of tiny sheep around a rotating disc, while a red-nosed man, seated on a barrel below raised a miniscule beer stein to his mouth. There was no irritating bird to pop out and cry “cuckoo”— this was Gold’s house, after all—only a gentle cascade of chimes and the barely audible hum of clockwork gears within. 

These soft, pleasant sounds were suddenly, disturbed by a loud ascending thump thump thump like three giant heavy steps going up the stairs behind him. Archie couldn’t help but remember that Gold had deposited his cane in a tall Chinese vase when they entered the house and spun around despite his promise, terrified Gold had fallen downstairs. 

“You okay?” Archie called up to him. 

Gold’s face popped over the side of the handrail on the upstairs landing high above. 

“Of course! Now stop peeking!” 

Archie stared up at him gobsmacked. How did Gold get up there so quickly? It was like he’d teleported to the upper floor in the few seconds it took the little people in the clock to go through their paces. If Gold had left some trail of teleportation smoke behind him, Archie wouldn’t have been surprised. It felt like stagecraft—now you see me, now you don’t-- the best kind of magic in Archie’s opinion. 

“How did you get up—“

“Now now!” scolded Gold wagging a finger and pitching his voice up like the cackle of a fairy tale witch. “Must maintain my air of mystery you know!”

Archie gave a huff of exasperation and turned to stare at his reflection in the wavy mirror above the curiosity cabinet. He could see the antique staircase reflected behind him, the wood of the balustrade polished to a high sheen. Idly, he wondered if it came with the house or whether Gold had dealt for it at one of the estate sales he liked to frequent in the region. It sported a unique swirling volute capped with a fanciful dolphin, hampered only somewhat by the carver’s hazy knowledge of cetacean anatomy. 

As Archie walked around to view the creature from the other side of the balustrade, (it really did look more like a fish than anything mammalian), he was surprised to find, concealed on the side of the antique handrail that faced the wall, another railing of plain metal, unadorned. A support to hold the older wood together perhaps?

No. Looking over at the wall that ran parallel to the balustrade, Archie saw an identical parallel handrail of metal, running along a recessed part of the wall. he saw another strong metal and in a recessed area in the wall that connected to the other side of the staircase, a parallel railing at the same height.   
Archie recalled his brief enthusiasm for men’s Olympic gymnastics. Although perhaps to call it an enthusiasm for gymnastics itself was a bit much. Truthfully, he was more enthralled by the ultra-tight package-enhancing costuming the competitors wore, than the sport itself. Still, he remembered enough to recognize a pair of parallel bars and to visualize athletes propelling themselves along with muscular arms, vaulting over vinyl “horses” and spinning up into the beams of gymnasiums holding nothing but straps and dangly rings. He peered up at the ceiling above Gold’s staircase to see if that was the case here, but saw nothing more incriminating than a large skylight. Even if Gold wasn’t some acrobat on the lam from Cirque du Soleil, Archie was still willing to bet he had somehow using the parallel bars to vault himself up to the second story of the house in only three hops. 

It was much like the rest of the house Archie came to realize in time, in that Gold made it perfectly his own, uniquely modified to his particular tastes and abilities in ways that didn’t initially attract notice.

For instance, Archie had thought the interior a little overcrowded at first, the hallways overly narrowed by random pieces of furniture. In time though, he grew to understand that the set up wasn’t random in the least. To the contrary, each stick of furniture was carefully positioned at the perfect distance from its fellow, each piece working seamlessly with its neighbour, parts in a perfect clockwork mechanism, allowing Gold to move smoothly between them, without need of any other walking aid.

Archie began to see that Gold and his house were of a piece, both mysterious and confounding to the idle observer who only looked at the surface. Gold’s clothes, his mannerisms, his words, even actions that in another person might be the product of a random impulse or a spontaneous burst of emotion, could be relied on with Gold to have been carefully planned to the nth detail, as if nothing in his universe could ever be left to chance. In Gold's strange design Archie sensed there was no margin for risk or error, but which pieces of his world performed which functions, even an accomplished student of human nature such as Archie couldn’t begin to guess. It was a house designed to obfuscate, misdirect and confuse, but in a clever, entertaining and charmingly inviting way, much like its owner.


	8. Chapter 8

At the heart of the house of Gold sat a mystery; Who the hell was this all for? 

Workers had come to install different parts of the house, cleaners to cleaner. But Gold had never showed the house off to anyone this way before, never explained himself and his precious objects to anyone before. It wasn’t what he’d intended and yet he’d found himself asking Archie over without even realizing it. It had just seemed so natural. Natural? Fuck natural! Hadn’t he spent the past fifteen years tamping down such natural impulses, suppressing every urge to reach out for fear of exposure. This way he knew could only lead to danger. 

And yet, and yet… what was the harm in grasping for such a tiny sliver of happiness in his life. Didn’t he deserve-- No, he deserved nothing, not after what he did. 

Then why… Why show Archie the house?

He worked on the interior of the house to please himself. As a relief from boredom he would set himself a problem and occupy his mind and hands with how to solve it and not just solve it, but solve it in the most beautiful way possible. He didn’t do drugs, or go on elaborate foreign holidays. In fact he went nowhere but to the neighbouring counties to seek out estate sales. As a rule he never travelled farther than he could drive in his car in a single day and he had not flown in an airplane since his arrival on this continent forty years ago. 

He cared nothing for jewellery and only really knew how to drive the one car he’d arrived in town with—a stolen black Cadillac. He knew of people who escaped their pain and problems with music, television shows, stories in books, and news reports; they immersed themselves in other people’s lives, diverting themselves from their own problems for a short span of time.

Unfortunately, that was a door long closed to him, offering no relief, only reminders of things best left in the past. Making things, fixing, modifying, beautifying, using his hands, that was the only respite left to him, that’s what he’d always been good at, yes, he was a genius with his hands his customers used to say, the way he could learn to play a person like Angelo could play a guitar, with such a gentle touch…

All this—his eccentric, magnificent house had been created simply to prevent him from going insane, a laughable folly. To let Archie in, into his inner sanctum, for him to be this close to all his secrets, his private self, was an act of trust he’d never had the courage for before. He’d had lovers, but they’d always met at hotels, kept it clean, brief, impersonal. 

He loved his home, and knew it was truly wonderful, but it was wonderful to him. Life had taught him well that other people tended to spoil the very things that were most precious to him. Another person could take what he found beautiful and shatter it with a cruel word, mocking laughter. And Gold was terrified of being laughed at more than anything. No, even that was a lie. There were things that frightened him more than being laughed at, memories he tried to keep out of his head… 

“I am an absurd creature,” Gold told himself, “a cheap, ugly man at the centre of all this expensive beauty.” And yet here was someone who thought his eccentric creation beautiful—who was actually impressed by what he could do, who called it “making broken things come to life again” like he was some sort of heroic doctor, saving desperate patients at death’s door.   
Gold looked in the mirror every day, and would’ve been the first to say he knew himself thoroughly, warts and all. 

How was it then that Archie could make him see something new? Archie with his bright red hair and freckles, who looked at him and saw someone Gold barely recognized as himself. Someone good, someone beautiful, someone brave. 

Sometimes, for a moment, Gold could see himself through Archie’s eyes and actually believe it was all really true. 

And then he’d remember…


	9. Chapter 9

“You can come up now!” Gold called down to Archie, scarcely able to hide the small tremor of excitement in his voice. 

Just as excited Archie took the steps two at a time.

Gold stood before a pair of closed double doors, the handles at his back, dressed in a velvet robe the colour of claret, looking for all the world like that man in that John Singer Sargent painting whose title Archie suddenly couldn’t recall. Where in the world had he found a bathrobe that fell all the way down to his ankles? Now a days it would be impossible to find anything for men that fell lower than mid-calf or knee length, but Gold’s bathrobe went all the way down to his slippers, neatly covering his legs. 

There was an impish half-smile on his face as he leaned with his back against the doors to what Archie presumed was his bedroom, his face both nervous and gleeful like a doting parent hiding an extra special birthday surprise from a child, eager for their little one’s joy and approval.

“Sooooooo…..” Gold purred drawing out the word, hands behind him twisting back and forth on the squeaking handles. “Herrrrre we arrreee.

“Yes,” gulped Archie. He raked his right hand through his hair, then worried to call attention to how it was thinning, quickly grabbed the hand back with his left. 

“I would like you to come inside---“

Archie stepped forward.

“But….” Gold raised a finger, “there’s something I have to tell you first. Because as soon as you step through that door I’m going to jump your bones and we’re going to have wild passionate fuck-sex—“

“Fuck-sex?” asked Archie, his voice cracking with anticipation.

“Fuck-sex,” Gold nodded seriously, as if this was a perfectly normal. “There’s just something I need you to know and be okay with before we go there, alright?”

Suddenly Archie’s stomach dropped. Oh my God, this is where he tells me he has HIV. As a man who came into puberty in the late 1980s it was where his worried mind always went first, but they’d both been tested for STDs before so it couldn’t be that. What then? 

Gold shuffled his feet slightly and looked down. “Archie, I, um, wear a compression stocking.”

“What?” Archie blinked at him, this was so not what he was expecting that it took a second for his ears to catch up with his head. “Where?”

“On my leg! Holy shit, where did you think I wore it!” 

Archie blushed as red as his hair and stuttered out an apology, “I’m sorry, I just didn’t think, I-I-“

“The problem is,” Gold continued quickly. “My doctor said I can’t take it off, only for 5 minutes every day, so if it bothers you, I won’t be offended if you back out now, but please don’t ask me to take it off because—“ 

Archie silenced Gold’s nervous babbling with a kiss. His mouth tasted of rich coffee. Up close he thought maybe Gold had on a touch of kohl around his eyes, a hint of red lip tint on his mouth. His lips tasted of Smarties. 

Gold though he would deny it, was a vain man, a strutting little peacock of a thing, thought Archie with delight. Something about his pettishness, his fustiness about presenting the perfect picture of a seduction, that easily wounded pride and worry that he somehow wouldn’t please Archie, that he would look ridiculous, because of some silly physical thing he couldn’t help made Archie want to hold him in his arms and stroke his hair, cuddle him and pet every last one of his cares away. 

Archie was touched that Gold would let his guard down so much for him. It was a heady sensation for Archie—always awkward, gangly, too tall, too eager, too ginger the last one chosen for the dance. To finally be chosen- - to be loved and not by some silly young man, just happy for a fuck and run—but by a man with experience, oh he knew from the occasional off-comment that Gold, perhaps not now, but certainly as a young man was very experienced, in a way no man he’d ever met at a meetups for gay professionals he’d been to could ever speak of, even if Archie had no idea quite the extent and depth of those experiences. At any rate, Archie saw Gold as someone who knew well what was out there, who with his money could’ve had his pick of bright and young and had chosen him, Archie. 

There are people who fall into love, into sex willy-nilly, relationships begun carelessly based on circumstance, mutual proximity and convenience, with little to bind two souls together other than the desire to scratch an itch, but Gold wasn’t that sort of person—everything he did, every carefully calculated gesture, every scrap of cloth in his breast pocket of his suit, every word from his lips was thought out beforehand—Archie knew there was nothing unpremeditated about him. And above all Gold was patient, Archie felt. Age had taught him it was better to wait than act rashly and Archie instinctively knew that Gold had been waiting for the right person to love and be loved by in return for a long, long time. 

To be so treasured so ardently was a heady feeling Archie still had not gotten used to. 

And Archie wasn’t the only one. Gold had literally been swept off his feet by the other man. It was disconcerting in a way to feel this much again—especially when that feeling came from another person. All these years he’d thought he’d sealed himself away from all that—knowing that love made him so vulnerable before and all that ever happened was the people he loved would leave him or be snatched away by forces he couldn’t stop. To be in love was to relinquish some measure of his hard won control over his life. It was taking Gold some serious effort to adapt to the uncertainty, but yet Archie with his flame red hair, earnest, open hearted generosity and secret shy smiles brought out something playful and happy in Gold, something he’d thought had been snuffed out long ago. 

His old heart, was like one of his antiques, repaired and brought back to functionality by Archie’s patient, gentle remonstrations. 

A love like this was something precious and rare—and Gold, above all knew the value of precious and rare things. He hoarded whatever brought his drab little life a scrap of joy and despite his fear it was against his packrat nature to give his Archie up. 

Besides, why couldn’t he have it both ways? He could let Archie into his life and heart, but still protect his secrets, still be careful to only let his lover know what he wanted him to know. After all, he never really lied about his past per say, just left a few things out here and there. Hence the necessity of the “compression stocking,” which was one of his very few outright lies, as it wasn’t actually a medical compression stocking at all, just the snipped off right leg of a large sized pair of women’s winter thickness brown opaque tights he’d purchased at the drugstore fifteen minutes before. 

 

*********

Gold gulped down three Tylenols and a Niquel with a splash of warm water and made for the bottle in Archie’s hand for a second helping. 

“Hey there!” Archie pulled it away. 

“Sorry,” muttered Gold and finished the rest of the water. 

“At least let’s get it elevated,” said Archie and pushed a storage ottoman over from its corner by the bookcase for Gold to use as a footrest. 

“You know,” said Archie, as he handed Gold a cushion, “I’m pretty sure I mentioned, back when we first started dating that I’d worked in the VA hospital before.”

“Maybe. So?” grunted Gold as he adjusted the cushion under his foot.

“So don’t you think I’d know what a compression stocking looked like?”

“You mean you—you knew?“ Gold stared balefully at him. “And you just let me go on pretending? It’s been months now!”

Archie shrugged. “We were having so much fun. I didn’t want to rock the boat. It seemed like such a little thing. I figured over time as we got more comfortable with each other, you’d quiet feeling so self-conscious around me and just stop wearing it. I’ve counselled lots of sexually active people with disabilities and—“

“You really think that’s what it’s about?” Gold gave a short bark of a laugh. “This,” he pointed to his twisted ankle, “is a fucking disability. This,” he said, gesturing towards the trouser leg above, “is another fucking thing entirely.”

Archie backed away, stung and utterly confused by his words. “I—“

“Look, I know you want to help and I appreciate it, but I’m just too tired for all this right now. Drive me to Dr. Nolan in the morning—“

“Dr. Nolan, Pongo’s vet?”

“Dr. Nolan, the vet tomorrow and I’ll pay you for your trouble. You’ve done enough, Arch. Let’s just—let’s just call it a night,” groaned Gold and sank back down into the couch.

“You don’t have to pay me,” said Archie softly, but Gold was already snoring.


	10. Morning Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just what it says on the tin....
> 
> XXXX

Archie woke to the sound of someone unknown in his apartment. At first he felt frightened, but then the events of the preceeding night came flooding back and he didn’t know what to feel. At least, if the sound of coffee grinding and swearing in nonstandard English was any indication, his friend hadn’t died of hypothermia or his injuries in the night.

He remembered carrying Gold up the stairs to the apartment. When had he ever actually physically carried another human being? Picking up his friend Mary Margaret’s baby boy—support the head—hold him to your chest—let him rest against your shoulder. Her many instructions rang in his ears as he hoisted Gold up to his chest, placing his lolling head against his shoulder. 

Only looking back did he realize the logical way to carry another adult was on his back, not chest to chest. Or maybe it wasn’t Mary Margaret’s instructions on baby carrying he’d been subconsciously imitating. Face to face was how straight couples made love, wasn’t it?

Remembering in the full flush of his daily morning arousal, he wasn’t prepared for a memory so tinged with eroticism. It hadn’t felt very erotic at the time, Archie had felt more worried than anything else, terrified of dropping Gold, but now all he could think of was the smaller man’s body and torso pressed against his and all he could feel were sinewy arms, large hands clasped around his neck and shoulders, legs around his waist, like two lovers in a clinch. 

For a second he’d been very aware of Gold’s cock pressed against his belly, the shape of it quite discernable beneath his wet trousers. He imagined again, the tickle of the ends of Gold’s soft hair against his neck, Gold small and shivering form in his arms, the fear of dropping him ever present in his mind, even now. Never in his life had he felt so protective of anything. He’d never thought himself as a violent man, but he knew, without a shadow of a doubt that if anyone tried to take Gold from him in that moment, he would have attacked them like a feral thing. 

Picturing Gold lifting his head, turning his eyes to him as he hadn’t on the night—kissing him full on the mouth, tongue flicking at the special place where jaw met neck, teeth nipping at his shoulder, he bucked his pelvis against the bed over and over, grinding against the sheets, letting the friction do the rest. He reached for the Kleenex box just in time as he listened to the noises in the kitchen, the coffee maker turning on, just like him.


	11. PASS!

Gold had been so focused on making his coffee, deciphering the secrets of Archie’s foreign coffee making apparatus that he had been unconscious of Archie’s approaching footsteps. 

Suddenly he looked up and there was Archie, looming tall-ly over him, like every other tall git who’d ever deigned to jump him and take advantage. Startled, he gave a little jump, as if to run away and instinctively stepped down on his injured foot. With a hiss of pain he hopped back and bumped his hip into a drawer handle sticking out from the opposite counter. 

Archie winced on Gold’s behalf as his lover swore a blue streak, using “cunt” way more than any born American could ever be comfortable with. 

“Sorry, small kitchen.” 

Gold merely grunted in acknowledgement and gingerly propped himself up on one foot with both elbows on the counter. After turning the coffee machine on and off with little success, he graduated to attacking a bag of ground up beans with the French press in a decidedly aggressive manner. 

Averting his eyes from Gold’s harried efforts Archie removed the sugar bowl from the top shelf. “You know you don’t have to do that. I can show you how to work the Tassimo.”

“It tastes better this way,” grunted Gold as he plunged the handle down with more force than was strictly necessary. 

With an irritated twitch, Archie set the table and prepared some toast with butter and jam.

“So I take it you’re feeling better?” 

“Mmmm?” Gold shrugged.

“Well you look less frozen at any rate.”

“I could still do with a little warming up.”

Archie put his arms around Gold who sighed into the taller man’s embrace, snuggling into his warming arms, only to forget once more and putting his bad foot down. 

“Fuck the fucking fuck FUCK!” he smacked the counter in frustration, only to succeed in hurting his hand. 

Archie kissed him gently on top of his head and gave his hair a little stroke, before Gold broke away from his touch. “It’s alright. I’ll take you to the hospital after breakfast.”

“No!” 

Archie covered his ears. “What happened to indoor voices? If the neighbours complain--” 

Gold grimaced, only just realizing how loud his voice had been. “Sorry, no need to be so loud, I know, I know small spaces, right? I won’t shout again. It’s just, I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry I’m acting so beastly. I know I’ve been such a bother and-- Archie, thanks for making breakfast and—you know saving my life and all the rest. I owe you— not many people would-- I honestly would’ve probably froze to death, I know.”

“Shush, it was no problem, no problem at all. Now eat your toast,” said Archie in a deliberately motherly fashion. 

Gold managed a small grin. He hobbled over to the table and sank gratefully into the chair Archie pulled out for him. 

They ate in companionable silence for a while, the only sounds munching of toast, spreading of jam and sipping of coffee. When they were done Archie began to collect the cups and plates to take to the sink. 

“Let me help you with the dishes,” offered Gold.

“No, you sit tight.”

“I’m not completely useless, you know! I could still fuck you seven ways from Sunday, even like this!”

“Oh, I know.” 

“Then why not let me, hmmm?” Gold rose from the chair and tried to nudge Archie aside with his hip. “Stop being so stubborn. Why won’t you let me help?”

“You really want to help me?”

“I—“

“Then TALK to me.”

“I am talking to y—“

“You know what I mean! Stop ignoring me and answer my questions.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll answer one, then we call Nolan, alright?”

“What happened to your leg that you can’t show it to me?”

“Pass.”

“You don’t get to pass! You just said—“

“Ask me something different!”

“Fine! How did you end up locked out of your own house without your keys?”

“Pass!”

“Why did you seem so scared, like you were trying to run away from someone?”

“Pass!”

“What happened to your cane and your coat and keys last night? Were you mugged or was someone--”

“Pass!”

“You didn’t even let me finish! Okay, fine, why did you come home in the middle of the night? Why not stay at a hotel in the city?”

“PASS!”

“What the fuck, Gold!” 

“PASS! PASS! PASS!” 

“Okay, why can’t you go to a normal human hospital? Surely someone who can afford a house like this has health insurance! Why do you want me to take you to Pongo’s vet? How the hell do you know Dr. Nolan, anyway?”

“David owed me a favour.” 

“DAVID? You’re on a first name basis with Pongo’s vet?!!! He owed you a favour? And that means what exactly? Please—“ Archie said, spreading his hands, “You’ve got to give me SOMETHING! How can we have a relationship based on trust if all I ever get out of you are half truths? You know I could’ve looked at your stupid leg if I wanted to—you were passed out—freezing in those wet clothes—I worried they’d make you’re hypothermia worse—I was that much away from stripping off your pants and putting you in a pair of my flannel pajama bottoms, but I knew you’d never forgive me for it. That you’d consider it some kind an intrusion—“

Gold shivered uncontrollably, his eyes fiery with anger—“More like a fucking violation—“

“Point is, I was willing to let you get even sicker just so you could keep your precious secrets. I’m on your side even if you won’t believe me! And now I want to know what was worth risking your life to keep quiet-- and why you won’t seek medical help when you so obviously need it.”

Gold stayed quiet. 

“How will you cope if your leg gets worse? C’mon, look you don’t have to answer all those questions—just a few, but please, tell me something,” Archie whispered, desperately lowering his voice. “Please give me something I can use to help you. Please Gold, I love you.”


	12. Chapter 12

Gold was quiet for a while. Archie had never said it before, but there it was. He loved him. Archie loved him, Gold! He held onto the thought fiercely, grasping it tightly to himself with every fibre of his being for a second, before the other pieces fell back into place. 

A Catch-22, that’s what it was. Archie said he loved him, but he said it as a plea to get Gold talking. The implication was, that if Gold didn’t talk, this love for him that Archie had just declared would be snuffed out. But if he did talk, and tell Archie the truth about who he was and what he’d done then Archie could never love him. Could he? What if—the suggestion was so ridiculous to Gold’s mind that it didn’t even bear stating, but what if—what if Archie still could? What if he could understand, could look past Gold’s past and still love him—But, then again what if he couldn’t?

Gold knew the law. He’d begun his study of it for a reason. He knew there was no statue of limitations on the kind of crime he had committed. If Archie told, if he went down for his crime now, now that he was so close to finding Bae again, everything, everything he’d worked for and sacrificed all these years would be for nothing! 

What to do? What to do?

When facing a terrifying threat, conventional wisdom says, the lizard brain takes over, overpowering us with the instinct to either fight or flee. There is another animal instinct the brain can respond with though, the instinct to freeze. 

And Gold, in the face of these impossible options, stood stock still, like a deer caught in the headlights, precariously balanced between one action and another. All he could do was just stare at Archie speechless, the only indication that time was still moving, the steady drip drip of the tap and Archie’s angrily blinking eyes as silent tears slid down his face. Archie, for his part said nothing. He had the good psychologist’s instinct to know when to wait someone out. 

Contrary to his motionless behaviour, Gold’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He desperately wanted to run away and hide, but he couldn’t run. Not that there was anywhere to hide in Archie’s own apartment if he could. He wanted to fight, but he knew it wouldn’t achieve anything, plus he didn’t want to hurt Archie. He loved Archie. That was the only clear thing in all of it. With everything else, his brain was truly deadlocked. Whatever choice he made, he knew it would be wrong, that doom would follow. Didn’t it always when it came to him? He was frightened, oh so frightened, by too many awful possibilities to count and by the distracting throbbing in his foot that drove all attempts to weave a coherent web of words that would lure Archie into complacency from his mind. 

Even before this most recent fall, his injury complicated his life far too much for his liking. It was frustrating, too, because he knew, if no one else did, that he himself was responsible for the whole thing; the injury and the resulting non-treatment of it, not to mention the tiring litany of problems it had left him with. If it was to become permenantly worse, due to him not getting proper treatment in a timely manner again, what would happen to his plans? How would he get to Bae then? 

So why not tell Archie the truth? Or at least a little bit of it. Hell, he was Archie. Archie wouldn’t betray him. Archie would understand. Patients told him horrible things all the time. He didn’t go to the cops. There was doctor-patient nondisclosure and all that, wasn’t there? 

But Archie wasn’t his doctor. They weren’t therapist and patient. They were friends, fuck-buddies, lovers, a couple, partners? As a regular citizen, couldn’t Archie be charged with aiding and abetting, concealing a criminal? If he told him and Archie didn’t tell the police, Archie could be prosecuted. 

Was it worth the risk, to be free of the lies at last? To be loved for the person he really was, past sins and all? 

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words, wouldn’t come, they had been drowned so deeply inside him for so long, it was felt impossible to pull them up to the surface. 

Maybe he could keep them inside, just a little bit longer, just until he was certain he was perfectly safe? Yes, he could fob Archie off with some short answers and—

But somehow, almost against his own conscious volition he heard his own voice speaking… “I met Dr. Nolan twenty years ago in Ithaca, New York…”


	13. Twelve Years Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, to paraphase F. Scott Fitzgerald; the past is not forgotten, the past is not even really past. 
> 
> OR...
> 
> How Gold met David Nolan.

TWELVE YEARS AGO

 

Gold remained in the city after the incident. Initially, it was out of necessity—he couldn’t go very far injured as he was, despite the screaming voice in his head urging him to flee as far away from the scene as physically possible. Slowly though, as he began to recover, he realized everything he needed was at hand here and the risk of meeting anyone from his old life in his new situation was comparatively miniscule. New York is a big city. That goes without saying, but what people outside never realized though, was how the different boroughs functioned almost like their own cities, separate worlds all concentrated into one intensely populated space. It was possible to live your entire life there without ever once venturing into a neighbourhood just a few streets over. Certain worlds never overlapped. 

With so much else in flux at the time directly after his escape, it took him a while to realize that the incident had left him strangely bereft of his sexuality. He found men no longer attracted him. Oh he could appreciate a handsome man in an objective distant way, but he no longer felt that deep down desire to have sex with men, to fuck them to the bones, to kiss them and devour the heady perfume that emenated from between their balls.

He thought it might be theoretically possible for a gay man to suddenly become straight. After experiencing such trauma had something along those lines had happened to him? But that wasn’t it either. Women similarly left him cold. He understood when a woman was beautiful, but his emotions remained untouched by her beauty, the flame of desire unkindled.

At first it terrified him, it felt so odd. He felt less than he had been all of the sudden, like a painter minus a colour in his paintbox. Didn’t an adult human being have to have some sort of sexuality? Maybe. He had heard of people who called themselves asexual. It must exist as a preference, just like everything else in this variable life. But he knew he hadn’t been that way to start, which meant something had happened to him inside, another piece of him broken that fateful night, perhaps the memory of what De LaCroix had done seeping into the sexual part of his being, poisoning all forms of sexuality by association, depleting him of what had once been a vital aspect of his soul. 

No, this could not stand, Gold decided when he was well enough to get out and about. They had taken everything from him, everyone—but a man had to draw the line somewhere.

And so, Gold undertook the serious business of looking for someone he felt even a slight attraction to.

He steered clear of certain gay clubs in New York, too much chance of running into old acquaintances. In fact, he eschewed gay New York altogether. With money in his pocket and a search for Bae on his mind, he’d started spending his weekends away from college and towns around the state of New York. He knew Bae was somewhere outside the city and this was as good a place to look as any. 

It astonished him that there was so much else to the state than New York City. He’d seen little else for years, but outside there were conservation areas of great beauty, rolling hills of autumn trees and robust farms, small cities and towns the retreat of manufacturing plants and steel mills had left ghostly and down at the heel, that still retained the patina of their Jazz Age splendor when manufacturing tycoons built castles in the St. Lawrence and Frank Lloyd Wright mansions graced the hills of Buffalo. 

He began hanging out in some of the college towns upstate, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, all the way up to Niagara Falls. Every university town had its own little gay scene if you knew where to look. Young, inexperienced men looking for someone to experiment with who wouldn’t be in their classes next semester, or a gent to pay their bar tab and buy them a decent dinner in exchange for a little physical affection. 

In time, something like a weak ghost of his old attraction to other men returned. He didn’t mind so much that it was a paltry thing compare to the old raging fire. It was easier to control this way, to keep himself out of trouble. A part of him enjoyed playing the debauched patron to the young scholars of New York state. Gold drank frequently on those weekends, if only to forget how he’d failed Bae with each unfruitful search. It shamed him, but at least a sexual partner’s arms wrapped around him in the moment of ecstasy, provided some human touch and comfort.

The empty routine continued until the night he showed up for gay pub night at a bar in Ithaca, met a nervous young veterinary student and his lust came back full throttle.


	14. Falling in Lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gold's first meeting with David.

The boy was nervous, Gold could tell. He knew his type from his former profession. First timers. Ditto the first words out of David’s mouth: 

“I’m not really gay,” he confided to Gold.

Because of course David wasn’t gay. He was from some small town in the mid-west Gold forgot as soon as he spoke its name. His parents were small time farmers. He played quarterback on his high school football team, had come to Cornell on a football scholarship, stayed on to study agricultural science, switched to the veterinary program at one of his prof’s recommendations. He liked real men’s sports like football and UFC fighting, didn’t listen to musicals or cook. He was broad-shouldered and his hair was carelessly buzzcut in a show of indifference. He was handsome in a large beefcake sort of way, but there was nothing pretty or feminine about him and yet…

“I’m bisexual,” he explained.  
“Uh-huh,” Gold nodded with a quirk of his eyebrow.  
“No, I am, seriously. I have a girlfriend.”  
Gold refrained from adding a sarcastic “in Canada.” This close to the border it was actually pretty common. “She’s a teacher, back home in Iowa. We want to get married. I’ve been aware all my life that I’ve always been attracted to both. It’s just that it’s always been easier, especially back home, to have girlfriends. Less flack from the parents. They’re really into church and all that stuff. Only now, I know when I go home I’m going to propose to her. She’s the one. I want to be her husband and I want to be faithful. But also, I want to know—I know if I get married without ever trying it with a man it’ll always be there at the back of my mind—the curiousity, you know?”

Gold didn’t say what he really thought, “How do you know if you sleep with a man now, especially this man, you’ll learn what you really prefer and then, your little vanilla smalltown girl will never be enough for you again.” What he did say was, “I understand. Don’t worry, it will only be for tonight. Like I told you, I’m just here for the real estate conference. I’ll be gone by tomorrow. You’ll never have to see me again and she never has to know.”

David nodded, relief plain on his face. 

The night they spent together satisfied Gold sexually beyond his wildest dreams. Whatever passed for boring vanilla sex in that town in Iowa was definitely far more advanced than he’d ever suspected. The oral skill alone…

Lying in bed with David in his posh hotel room, far away from the student area of the town, Gold was surprised to realize that the one who was eager for the tryst to continue was himself. 

Still, he was careful not to wake David when he left. Let him enjoy a decent bed away from his dreary student futon until housekeeping came to wake him. 

More importantly, Gold didn’t want David to see him without his clothes on in the light. 

In those days, before he’d come up with the inspiration for the compression stocking lie, he stuck with bandages or the cover of darkness for lovemaking. In the dark,especially, it was difficult for a partner to notice any pattern to the scars or that they were the result of anything other than the vague car accident injury Gold used to explain away his limp. Looking back it shocked him now to recall how careless he’d been then, how many unnecessary risks he’d taken. But his new life was still relatively new back then, everything still in flux. He was a dandelion puff floating on the breeze, moving frequently with no foundation. He’d built up no edifice or professional reputation he needed to protect. In the big city he was just another drop of water in an endless ocean. 

There was no thing as love at first sight according to Gold, but lust—yes, you could fall into lust. And he had fallen for David in such a way. Plus, the young, would-be vet was far nicer than anyone Gold was used to being with. 

Before taking his leave of David, Gold left his email and number on a slip of paper on the pillow he had slept on. 

Gold genuinely liked David, but old habits die hard. Before leaving he examined David’s wallet and took down his information, addresses in Ithaca and Iowa, phone number off his driver’s license, student number from his student card. He had no Visa or Mastercard.

Gold was unsurprised to find a photo of the man’s prospective paramour in the wallet with her hair cut like a boy’s. David probably told her he liked it that way. Gold didn’t touch any of the money. 

He was equally discrete when he took his photos. Natural light only, no flash. Experience had taught him the correct angle to use to get a shot with his own cock in the frame. A desperate man never knew when such a photo might come in handy. Now Gold remembered his prescient thinking at the time, that it was always good to have someone who owed him a favour, especially when that someone had a medical degree.


	15. Rememberance of Things Past

Without knowing it, David was the one who brought Gold to Storybrooke. 

As part of his training as a vet, he did a practicum at a horse hospital near the upstate New York town of Storybrooke, not to far away from the University of Cornell in Ithaca. The training went so well that that the doctor he was working under recommended him to the animal clinic in town where she also worked. He was at the right place at the right time, as the old veterinarian was retiring and they were having trouble attracting someone new to the small town practice. 

David went back to Iowa and told his fiancée Mary Margaret about the job. She’d been looking for a way out of Iowa, away from her controlling new stepmother for ages and jumped at the chance to move to Storybrooke. Just think! Glamourous New York City, only 6 hours drive away in light traffic! 

That summer they had a small family wedding with a lovely outdoor reception in his parents’ backyard. After the cake was eaten and the guests had gone home, they went for a walk together. Standing on the only hill in town, they looked down over the fields of corn and potatoes, David’s meagre little kingdom. The buildings of Main Street glowed luminous and pink in the fading sunset. They kissed and talked about their future and said good-bye to the town they’d always called home. A week later they arrived in Storybrooke, took an apartment in town and started their new life together. 

Initially, finding permeant teaching work was difficult for Mary Margaret. After knocking on every school door in town, she found a position at last teaching third grade at a private Catholic girl’s school. St. Clement’s had an excellent academic reputation and was run on the grounds of the local church, where a small coterie of nuns ran a little abbey. 

Most of the sisters worked at the school as teachers and support staff. Mary Margaret only managed to get in with a letter from her local priest back home to back up her claim to be a good church-going Catholic, despite the fact that she had married David, a Protestant. While the setting was slightly more religious than she was used to, at least, she reminded herself, she was working in her chosen profession and making a decent salary. 

And so, after a short period of adjustment, David and Mary Margaret settled into the rhythms of life in Storybrooke. Despite the reputation of such towns for being insular and unfriendly to outsiders, David and Mary Margaret discovered the opposite was indeed the case. They were needed and welcomed. David kept the local animals in good health while Mary Margaret became indispensable to the church after organizing the yearly nativity play and Easter pageant.

All these facts were there in the open for any traveller in town to discover from just an hour and a half sitting at the counter of the local diner pretending to read a “Guide to Castles of New York State” while listening to locals talking. When there were no customers about, the waitress at Granny’s proved chatty, not to mention seriously underdressed. Thanks to the plunging neckline of her top, Gold could see practically down to her nipples every time she bent over to wipe a counter or pick a fallen forks off the floor. 

Even in his rent boy days, had he ever tried quite so hard? He was wise to the reasons she chose to pick them up one by one instead of a handful at a time. She wanted him to look. Too bad she was barking up the wrong tree. Oh, he knew that come-on look alright. Gold also knew he didn’t have much going for him in the height, looks or mobility department anymore, but his suit, watch, wallet and expensive car park outside the window spoke of riches enough to eclipse all those minor drawbacks, especially in a one horse town like this one. He left her a hefty tip for her trouble and booked the best room at the inn upstairs.

In his room in the honeymoon suite Gold flipped through the 4x6 glossies he’d taken five years past. Long ago, blackmail had come so easily to him, all part of the package when one bought certain services from his old boss, De LaCroix. Why not make a client pay twice for the same service if they could get away with it? He’d felt no pity, only felt animosity for the rich jerks who could afford to pay to cover up their reputations. But David wasn’t like those hypocrites who bought his services so long ago. What they’d given each other was given freely, trustingly. 

Still, Gold needed help and beggars couldn’t be morally scrupulous. He couldn’t go on looking for Bae in the state he was in, and seeing a doctor in a proper hospital was out of the question. 

He lay in wait for Dr. David Nolan outside the animal clinic, a small building adjacent to a failing strip mall, trying hard to think about anything, but what he was about to do. 

Emerging from the clinic at last he saw his quarry. David looked much the same, aside from a slightly longer haircut and better clothes. Gold was the one who’d changed, and certainly not for better.

“Dr. Nolan—“ 

A sharp voice called out to the veterinarian through the window of an unfamiliar car. 

“Could I have a second of your time?”

“Uh, sure, what’s up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> XXXXXXXX
> 
> Strangely enough I've never actually explained where the title of this series comes from. In case you are absolutely frantic with wondering "Now where have I heard that phrase before?" I stole the title from this novel by George Selden, one of my favourites as a kid: 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Cricket-Times-Square-Chester-Friends/dp/0312380038
> 
> It is about an actual cricket who gets lost in the New York subway and befriends a streetwise mouse and cat who live there. The illustrations were by Garth Williams who also did the Little House books.
> 
> Archie Hopper is the cricket in this story and the aspect of Times Square featured here is more akin to the Times Square of "Midnight Cowboy" than that of Chester the Cricket. I never saw Times Square in its sleazy heyday. By the time I got there in the late 1990s it was considerably cleaned up and an excellent place for getting tickets to a broadway show. 
> 
> By the way if you have never seen "Midnight Cowboy"...um, what the hell is wrong with you?


	16. Blackmail for Beginners

David approached the mud covered, slush-spattered Cadillac as a hand beckoned him through the open window. “Come in, it’s freezing out there,” said a man’s voice.

“But my car’s just over there,” David pointed to his second-hand truck, a sensible vehicle for the terrain he often travelled when he worked with animals on farms. 

“I’ve been looking for you for ages.” A thin, pinched face peaked out from the open window, dominated by overlarge eyes and nose. “Please, don’t you remember me?”

The accent was odd for this part of the world, but David couldn’t place him at first. The context was all wrong. “I’m sorry but— wait a minute—you’re—did we? In Ithaca when I was at Cornell?”

Gold nodded, relieved he could stop dropping hints and move on to what he came there for. The sooner the sordid part was over with, the better. “You left something in the hotel. I know it’s been years, but I’ve wanted to give it to you for ages. It was so fortuitous that my business brought me here, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I can’t believe it, I mean that was eons ago, what was it I lost?” asked David as he climbed into the Cadillac. 

The old photos of their one tryst were fanned out like playing cards on the armrest between the seats.

“What the hell?”

“Let’s make a deal, you help me and I won’t show these to your wife.” 

“Seriously?” David laughed.

“What?” asked Gold, startled.

“Are you trying to blackmail me? With these?”

“Uh, maybe. What’s so funny about that?”

“Look, I’m sorry you came all this way, but you can put those useless pictures away. My wife already knows.”

“What?”

Of all the possible outcomes Gold had prepared himself for—David physically attacking him, (gun under the steering wheel), David denying the man in the pictures was him (birthmark that couldn’t belong to anyone else), this was the one possibility Gold hadn’t thought of in advance. In vain Gold tried to recalibrate and adapt his plan to take control of the situation, but David was too quick. 

“I felt guilty about it and I thought before we are married we have to be completely clean and honest with each other, so I told her,” he explained.

“And she was… okay with it?”

“Yeah, actually I think it reassured her a bit.”

“That’s… odd.”

“No, see, she suspected I liked both anyway and was always worried my curiosity would get the better of me one day and I’d stray and never come back to her. This way she said she knew I’d tried it with a guy and preferred her after all, so she didn’t have anything to worry about. Also, she’d had an indiscretion with this total jerk at teacher’s college while we were apart and the guilt was just tearing her to pieces. Here she thought I was this perfect paragon of virtue and it turned out we were both playing the field, and both of us thought it didn’t hold a candle to what we had with each other. We both came clean to each other then and there and it wiped the slate completely. If anything I think we’re even closer together now since my confession. In fact we’ve totally adopted my bisexuality into all these awesome role playing games we do in the bedroom and she’s completely down with it. She says the whole strap-on thing is really liberating and—“

Gold covered his ears. “Arrrrrrr!”

“What? Too much info?” When David looked over he was shocked to see that his would-be blackmailer was banging his head against the steering wheel in frustration and actually crying. 

“Look, sorry to burst your bubble man, but-- Actually, you know what? Not sorry.” David snatched up the pictures and tore them in half. “That’s a really mean thing to do. What do you want so badly you think you need to blackmail me to get it anyway? I’m not a millionaire, I’m just a fucking vet.”

“I know.” Overlarge eyes stared miserably back at him out of the gloom. “I don’t need a millionair. I need a vet.”

David glanced around the car. “You have a sick animal? Here?”

Gold managed a weak smile. “Of a sort. I need to see a doctor, but I can’t go to a hospital and I—I thought of you. You—you seemed kind. That night together, it was the first time in a long time I felt attracted to anybody, the first time in ages I felt loved.”

“Yeah, you have a funny way of showing your gratitude.”

“Please, I’m desperate! I’m in constant pain!”

“So go to a people doctor, I’m not licensed to practise medicine on humans.”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“They’ll take me away! Please! You’ve got to help me!”

“Or I could just call the police.”

“I can help you! You and your wife!”

“Right. Like we need boudoir photos.”

“No, seriously—I know—you’ve been living in that wee flat above the drug store for how long now? You want to get a house, start a family—only you don’t have enough money for the down payment that you need to get the mortgage from the bank.”

“And you’ve got a barrelful of cash somewhere you’ll just let me have?” 

“Better.” A gold plated Rolex watch materialized in Gold’s hand. “Let’s say your dear great uncle left you with a bit of inheritance.” 

David picked up the watch and turned it over in his hands. The light was dim in the parking lot. “It could just as easily be a fake.”

“It’s real,” said Gold. 

“And why should I believe you?”

“Fine, get it looked at, appraised. Keep it, sell it, do whatever you want with it, but there’s more where that came from, I promise. I’m in town for the Thanksgiving week. If you think you can help me, you call me alright?” A trembling hand extended a card. “That’s my mobile number, don’t lose it, yeah?”

David was just about to leave everything behind; the Rolex, the torn up pictures, the card with the cell phone number, when something in the other’s man’s eyes, some reminder of the sweet night they’d spent together, Gold never mocking him for desires he’d thought so shameful—his guide, gently helping him along through unfamiliar territory-- Why was Gold doing this? There was more there, some source for all this desperation, a mystery he longed to uncover, no matter that it tainted him with this man’s guilt, and guilty he certainly must be to not want to go to a doctor for fear of—what exactly?

“Come into the light,” spoke David, almost against his will.

“What?” blinked Gold. 

“Get out of the car, let me have a look at you.”

“What? Why? I—“

“Maybe there’s something I can do for you while we wait to see about this watch.”

Gold wasn’t sure exactly what David meant, but if sex was what the other man was after, it wouldn’t be too much for him to supply it. He’d traded much more for far less in return and—  
Like a flower unable to stop following the sun of David’s golden hair, glowing yellow beneath the streetlight Gold stepped out of the car entranced…and promptly collapsed on the ground.


	17. Property of...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short caveat about the following chapter: I am not a trained vet or doctor. Anything you read here is solely based on dog and human medical shit I read on the internet. I do not represent the cortisol injection industry in any capacity. Also...Do not try this at home. 
> 
> XXXX

Gold came to on the small futon in the back room of the vet clinic. 

“Thank goodness!” sighed David.

“Where am I?” asked Gold sleepily.

“The back of my office. Sometimes I take little cat naps here if I’ve been up all night. It doesn’t happen often, but we do get the occasional emergency call—mares giving birth or some poor cat run over in the middle of the night who needs emergency surgery, that kind of stuff.”

Gold nodded mutely, still marvelling at the fact that he was blissfully pain free for the moment. The pleasure and relief at the absence of the pain in his leg made him feel like he was floating on a cloud—light and free untethered to the ground. With a distant sort of fear he realized he’d been stripped down to his shirt and drawers. David had seen everything then. Somehow Gold didn’t have the energy left to care. He was just so so so so tired. He could barely keep his eyes open. It was so long since he’d been able to sleep due to the ache in his leg. He was about to drift off again into sweet sweet slumber when David’s irritating voice cut through Gold’s consciousness.

“You fell asleep!” he said accusingly. 

“Obviously.”

“I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought maybe—“ he waved his hands around indicating a cloud of possibilities. “I took the liberty of administering a local anasthetic. Nothing too strong. That’s why you can’t move your leg. We use that dose on dogs a fifth of your size. It’s only temporary though, so I could do an X-ray. Of course this equipment isn’t really ideal, but we did once do a scan on a St. Bernard and he was about your size.” David brought the X-ray film up on his computer screen. “Don’t worry I put the lead vest on you and everything. Listen, you should really to go to a human hospital. You’ll need surgery on that leg. I’m not an expert, but if you were a dog, I’d say several bones healed crookedly and now they’re rubbing up against some of the tendons, throwing off bone spurs. Whoever set the original breaks did a really shitty job. Honestly, you ought to sue.”

Gold waved the idea away. Something else was of more pressing concern. “And the rest—you saw…” He could barely meet David’s eyes for shame, but when the other man looked up, Gold was surprised to find the veterinarian near tears.

“You should have told me!”

“What?”

“Whoever did that to you—they should be in prison! Who was it?”

“Doesn’t matter, my fault.”

“No it’s not! Whatever you think you did, no one deserves abuse like that.”

“I wouldn’t really call it abuse.”

“Well, the very least it’s assault—bodily harm-- and a—a hate crime!”

“Hate crime?”

“To use a word like that—to carve a word like that into someone’s flesh--” David flushed with fury. “The thought of someone doing that to me—to someone I loved—shit like that’s why it took me so long to be honest with myself, with Mary Margaret too, about who I am. How can you protect such scum! The idea of some twisted bigot taking a knife to—“

“He was my pimp.” Gold’s voice sounded hollow and far away, even to him. 

“Your pimp? You were a—“

“Yes. What do you think ‘This dirty faggot property of Franklin Morris DeLaCroix’ means? Apparently, I needed a reminder and yes, before you ask I wish to hell he’d had a shorter name.”

David stared at Gold, stunned. “How can you joke about that?” 

Gold shrugged, “What the fuck else can I do at this point? What’s done is done.”

“And this guy, this Franklin Morris whatever whatever—where is he now?”

“Somewhere he can’t hurt anyone else.”

“Did you—I mean-- Is he—?”

“Not going to answer that. Trust me, the less you know, the better.”

David gulped. “Please tell me that watch wasn’t his.”

“That watch wasn’t his.”

David stared at Gold unable to tell if he was being serious and telling the truth, joking, lying or being sarcastic. 

Suddenly, David Nolan didn’t know which way was up. Gold had come along and completely unmoored him. David’s world was one of college football games, backyard barbeques and frat clubs. The greatest trauma he’d ever dealt with was having to tell an elderly widow that her beloved nineteen year old cat wasn’t going to make it. He had no frame of reference for this—whatever this was. There was nothing in his schoolmarm wife making Thanksgiving turkey with rice and apple stuffing life that applied. 

And yet… when Gold looked at him like that—all huge brown eyes, battered nose and half-starved face, like some poor puppy who’d seen nothing but cruelty and abuse from human beings all it’s life—how could sweet, soft-hearted David show anything but compassion? Of course Gold tried to blackmail him— from caring for abused animals, David knew that a dog treated like that all it’s life would only try to bite first before anyone else could get a kick in. He said nothing of it to Gold, wisely doubting the other man would enjoy the comparison to a reject from the animal shelter. 

“I get why you don’t want to go to a hospital. If they see the name and run it through a computer they’ll, uh, they’ll see what happened to him. If it’s bad they might put two and two together and suspect you of…” 

Gold shot David a warning glance.

“Suspect you incorrectly of course, but whatever, suspect you in, uh, whatever, uh unpleasantness happened to the guy.” 

Gold nodded, “Uh-huh.” No need to muddy the waters by mentioning that the deserving pimp might not be only one who had something “unpleasant” happen to him.

“I mean clearly a person like that would be real evil,” David tried to reason with himself, “and like a cancer on the community and all that, so a person who took that asshole out would actually be doing everyone a favor, but you know, the law’s supposed to be impartial. A court might not see it that way.”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” said Gold smoothly. If law school had taught him anything, it was the art of choosing just the right words. 

“You’ll need surgery at some point and I won’t do that. I don’t have the knowledge and I don’t have the equipment,” David admitted. “There’s no permanent fix I can give you.” 

“I know. All I want is some kind of stop gap measure, just until I can be sure of a few things and raise my head back up again. I just need to stay underground for the next few months, just until I’m sure it’s safe. Only with my foot like this existence is bloody unbearable and I can’t sleep. Please tell me there’s something you can do.”

David’s brow furrowed as he thought. “You know I had this elderly Great Dane in here last week. They’re a large breed so they tend to get hip and elbow problems, dysplasia and…”

“Please tell me this is going somewhere.”

“This elderly dog had hip arthritis for a few years. Ordinarily, we’d do a hip replacement, but she was already too old for surgery when they brought her in. We tried a number of drugs before we started cortisol injections. I find they really work wonders. They’ve been using them for years on people in sports medicine.”

“Fuck it then, let’s shoot me up.” 

Yes indeed, Gold really did have a gift for words.


	18. Prodigal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaaaaaaack!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> XXXXX

“And so, the prodigal patient returns,” thought David as he watched Gold grab savagely at the railing outside the vet’s office and hop the three steps to the door swearing a blue streak.  Although it was very early, David was thankful he’d cleared the front steps of ice and snow as soon as he arrived.  He was always at the office earlier than his assistants.  Growing up on a farm and rising with the sun had stood him in good stead as a vet.

 

David glanced across to the parking lot, looking for the black Cadillac.  The car could often be found lurking around Gold like a sinister witch’s familiar, but the  only other vehicle in the lot, much to his surprise, was Archie Hopper’s maroon Saab.  David was just wondering if he’d somehow missed Pongo’s name on the day’s register of patients when Archie suddenly leapt out of the car accompanied by much hysterical barking from within.

 

“Gold!  Gold! I told you to wait you stubborn idiot! Why don’t you ever listen!” 

 

“When you said we had to stop off to get something from your place you didn’t say it was your bloody dog!” snapped Gold.  He was at the door now, rattling the lock as David hurried out of his office and down the hall to the office lobby.   

 

“I mean how do you expect him to react when he sees us pulling into the vet’s office?” asked Archie, exasperated as he caught up, struggling with Pongo all the while.   “C’mon Pongo!  Be quiet!”

 

“For goodness sake control him!”

 

“Sorry, but I couldn’t leave him at home—he hasn’t seen me all night!”

 

“Yes, poor dear, must’ve been worried sick.”

 

“Shut up, you don’t know, when he gets anxious and lonely he just pees everywhere, like on my bed and my pillow and—“

 

David chuckled under his breath—of all the couples he pictured ever hooking up with each other in Storybrooke, why oh why had the deliciously scandalous thought of Archie and Gold never once crossed his mind?

 

He wondered if perhaps he ought to have warned the bespectacled therapist just what he was getting himself into. Then again, Dr. Hopper was a relatively young man, he’d probably have the stamina to keep up, not to mention that at the moment, the old pro hardly appeared to be at the peak of his powers.   As much as the catty bitch within might be amused to watch them argue, Gold was clearly in some difficulty, and as a vet, David abhorred the sight of a beast in pain. 

 

He unlocked the door and waved hello.  “Gold, Archie, Pongo—what brings you here this morning?” 

 

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXTEN YEARS AGOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

“Come for the steroids, stay for the hospitality,” David quipped semi-drunkenly across the dining room table. 

 

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” said Mary Margaret, no _Mrs. Nolan,_ Gold corrected himself.  He would not get too cozy with these people and he definitely would could NOT call her “Mar-Mar” with a straight face as she recommended he do or even more disgustingly “Snow White” as the clearly besotted David (after five years of marriage!) did. 

 

Gold groped for a neutral subject of conversation.  “This turkey is delicious,” he said with an inward rolling of the eyes at the inanity of his observation.  “My compliments to you Mary.”

 

“Oh pish, it was all David’s doing, wasn’t it sweetie?”

 

“Mmmhmmm,” said the strapping young vet through a mouthful of turkey leg.  Gold watched him chomp straight into the drumstick like Friar Tuck in that old Robin Hood cartoon as he downed another glass of sherry.  It might as well have been port, as by now Gold was pretty indifferent to what it was he was drinking, the only point being to get him through this awkward dinner.  Whatever it was, he hoped it would get him suitably legless at the very least before desert—not that that would be much of an issue in his current state, he thought ruefully; he was already halfway there without even drinking a drop.  

 

“I can’t believe you insist on calling me Mary Margaret,” giggled the dark haired pixie haired woman he’d once tried to blackmail with gay sex photos of himself and her husband, sitting across from him at the table. “No one calls me that except the sisters at the school, makes me feel like a fucking nun—“

 

“I think it’s hot,” added David, “fucking a nun I mean.  Have you ever fucked a nun Gold?”

 

“No.” 

 

“But Mar-Mar would make a such cute one, don’t you think?”

 

Mary Margaret gave David a playful slap on the ass in response. 

 

“Gack!”  Gold suddenly forgot how to chew just as a turkey bone went sideways into his mouth. 

 

“And don’t you think David would make the sexiest most seductive taboo priest?”  added Mary Margaret pouring more fuel on the fire.

 

“I know, _right_?  Did you ever try nun and priest play—like when you were a prost—like before, professionally, you know? I mean it’s a thing, right, like it’s not perverted!  I found these websites, so I know we’re not the only ones…”

 

“He really gets into it!” enthused Mary Margaret as Gold tried gave himself an impromptu Heimlich maneuver using the table edge, not an easy feat considering he was seated sideways with his bad leg elevated on the adjacent chair. “I mean he even has a dog collar!”

 

“A priest one—not like the one you used to have,” added David helpfully, “with the metal studs and the leash and—“ 

 

“You had a leash!” squeaked Mary Margaret with delight as Gold gave a final wretching cough and spat the bone up onto his plate. 

 

“Ew,” said David, wrinkling up his nose. 

 

And maybe it was just the liquor, or choking on the bone, but Gold just knew his face was flushed.  The fact that these two corn-fed idiots could do that to _him_ , considering the things _he’d_ seen was quite an achievement, it had to be said.  He had up until then considered himself un-embarassable. 

 

Mary Margaret stared at the bone on the plate sitting forlorn on Gold’s plate of mashed squash and sweet potatoes.  “I can’t believe you actually tired to blackmail us,” she mused, still amazed. 

 

“Not you dearie, never you,” he murmured and gave her hand what he hoped was a consoling pat, “only your husband.”

 

“But that’s even more ridiculous!  I mean you realize you’re like half his size, right?”

 

“So I’ve been told.”

 

“It’s just so old school!  So… what’s the word for it darling?”

 

“Victorian?” 

 

“Yes!  Deliciously Victorian!”  she giggled.  “Like something out of Murdoch Mysteries!  Or a really  louche bodice ripper… ”

 

“Can I go now?” asked Gold with a meaningful look at his crutches, propped up against the chair next to him along with his anaesthetic numbed foot.

 

David had given him some valium to partially sedate and relax him, plus the local anesthetic on the area where the corticosteroid would be injected.   Of course Gold had had to watch the needle go in for some reason, like some rubbernecker at a car accident, feeling eerily detached from it the whole time.  He’d felt nothing, not even a prickle, but just looking at the long bloody needle-y thing had been quite traumatic enough on its own.  The needle itself contained a localized painkiller and the cortical steroid, which would initially increase and then significantly decrease the inflammation at the joint according to David.  He’d counted on there being pain, but there was little as yet, mostly numbness and a slight discomfort.  The extent of the  dopey, thick headed feeling  he woke up with was something he hadn’t counted on however, or that it would take so long for him to come out of his sleepy stupor. 

 

He was horrified to discover how late it was.  A concerned David had offered to take him to the station when he realized the last bus back to New York would be departing soon.  As it turned out, after helping him dress himself and make it out to the parking lot of the vet’s surgery, they’d had to turn back again after he realized in his stupor he’d forgotten his wallet in David’s office.  In the end they’d only been just in time to see the last bus pull out of the station.  The weather had not improved either, the snow swirling around with further flurries promised by the person on the radio warning it might progress to whiteout conditions within the hour.

 

“Where would you go?” asked Mary Margaret reasonably.   “That was the last bus.  No trains are running in this storm and there’s no way I’m letting you go anywhere until that shit’s out of your system.  Why not stay the night?”

 

Gold’s mouth felt suddenly dry, visions of being trapped like that poor soul in “Misery” spooling through his mind.   He hadn’t quite been able to make it through the entirety of that movie… For obvious reasons if you knew about his past, although the only people who knew about _that_ wouldn’t be talking anytime soon.

 

“David could still drive me to a motel.” 

 

“It’s a whiteout out there, I’m not letting him out in that, he’d go right off the road without even knowing it!  Plus, it’s Thanksgiving.  No one should spend Thanksgiving alone,” she announced with solid finality. 

 

Oh, so that’s what the turkey was about.  He really was drugged up if he was that clueless as to not to notice.  The truth was Gold had never paid much attention to such a quintessentially American holiday to begin with.

 

“Assuming you got on the bus, how were you planning on getting back to your apartment in New York and getting groceries and taking care of yourself?  David said you have to keep off your foot completely for 48 hours for the treatment to work properly.  What were you planning to eat?”

 

Gold had in fact meant to stock up on frozen pizzas beforehand, but the last week he’d been so dragged out, it had been a challenge to go anywhere but home and the lawyers’ office he was articling at.  He wished he could have got David to do the injections right away, the week before when he’d come down by car, but as it turned out, getting the proper materials and medicines together took time, not to mention that David had to learn how to administer the injections to humans, rather than dogs and cats as he’d been accustom to.  

 

Gold had been subsisting on ramen noodles from the convenience store on the main floor of his building, pizza delivery and whatever food was left out in the kitchen of the articling office, for the past month, truth be told. 

 

It wasn’t because he couldn’t afford better food, like in the old days, but simply because it was such a hassle for him to go out in the winter.  Pain medication and his work at the office left him too exhausted.  He often came home and just fell asleep on the futon in the living room, without even taking off his rumpled suit, forget brushing his teeth.  Still, he’d lived much rougher than this, much rougher.

 

“I manage,” said Gold stiffly.  “I’ve always managed.” 

 

“You’re a survivor,” said Mary Margaret.

 

“Yes.”

 

“But why just survive and be miserable, when you could really live and have fun, what do you have against good food and friends and a warm bed?”

 

She gazed straight into him then, as if she could pin him to the wall like a butterfly with that inquisitive gaze of hers.  He wondered if she could look deep down past his eyes into the dark, murky cesspit of his messed up soul. 

 

 Why _would_ a person choose to be alone, sustaining oneself only enough to survive, rather than be with others and truly live and enjoy?   There were answers, but he couldn’t articulate them.  He could _feel_ the outline of the reasons why, but it was like groping in the dark— they weren’t anything he’d ever heard another person voice before, there weren’t ready-made words or phrases he could use to explain it, even if he wanted to.  He knew there was no way he could make himself understood, especially to people who’d never experienced the underside of humanity like he had. 

 

Why not give in to fun and food and friendship?   Because, Gold thought, it is all an illusion, just one happy moment in time before it all inevitably goes to hell, all the bonhomie and cheer, Norman Rockwell painting of happy, rosy cheeked togetherness and these poor sods don’t have the life experience to realize it— but Gold knew the truth, family would as soon sell you out and stab you in the back, as hold you up and help.  If you let someone close to you, it just made you open to being betrayed, exploited and ripped off.  And even if it didn’t end that way, friends, lovers, family—they always left, or were taken away.  No one he’d ever cared about had ever stuck around.

 

But there was more to it than that.  How could he tell someone like Mary Margaret the other thing?  There were thoughts he was sure had never been part of her repertoire.  He knew that someone like him, really only deserved to survive.  After the things he had done, it was wrong for him to seek out a life of fun and companionship.   Not when he had stolen that life from someone else and certainly not while Baelfire was still out there, alone without his father, abandoned.   He couldn’t waste his time on fun and frivolity, not until he’d made things right.

 

As a boy, in his brief stint at his RC school in Scotland, before his father Malcolm Senior remarried and called his son to him across the pond to the States, the priests talked about mortal sin and the Sacrament of Penance and Christ suffering for their sins.  Gold couldn’t say that even back in the day he’d ever bought into it.  He first broke faith after Hamish McCormick pushed him in the playground on purpose and he fell on the hard cement and broke his nose.   The head master Father Donelly made the guilty boy say a bunch of rosaries to get absolution and pronounced that that was the end of that.

 

The young Gold stared at Father Donelly and smug little Hamish McCormick like they’d just sprouted antlers. Why was Hamish apologizing to _God_ , if _he_ was the one stuck with a bent nose for the rest of his life? He was the one who’d been hurt.  At least he could’ve got some comic books and an ice lolly off the whole ordeal.  As it was, he’d just been packed home to his aunts, who’d had to pay to buy him a new uniform shirt to replace the one covered in blood.  An unfortunate attempt to even the score by trying to batter Hamish during playtime the next day,  had only ended in his own suspension.  And yet, the idea that you could do _something_ to erase your mistakes, to balance things out if only you _suffered_ enough had a certain appeal.  So many years later, it was still a hard mind set to break free of.

 

“Besides,” cut in Mary Margaret, “I’ve been bored stiff here lately.  The lack of entertainment  options in this town in wintertime seriously blow. We were supposed to go to New York this weekend but the hotels were all booked up and stupid expensive.  David says you’ve lived in the city—so if we can’t go there why not bring some of that city to us?  Go for it.  Tell us your most scandalous story about the big apple!”

 

“Most of the stories I know aren’t for innocent ears.”  

 

“Oh goody!”

 

“Uh…”

 

“C’mon already, spill!” 


	19. All Arrows Point to Storybrooke

And so Gold regaled them with stories— tales of his rent boy past, filled with drugs, clubs and nominally famous people.  All were sordid, some were scandalous and more were funny.  He told himself it was because the valium and wine had loosened his tongue, but he supposed in retrospect maybe it was the company.  He’d been closed up for so long, the opportunity to “spill” as Mary Margaret so charmingly called it proved irresistible and then, like a burst dam, he just couldn’t stop.  Still, he was cagey enough to know which stories to hold back.  He never told them of Baelfire or Cory or Milah although a few times it was a near thing.

 

If David had shared the name he’d found carved into Gold’s flesh with his wife, she had the tact not to speak of it.  Not on that night nor on the many Thanksgiving, Christmas and other holiday dinners he came to share with them, did she give any indication she knew _that_ part of his story.   So it seemed David had kept his secret.  Gold had run a significant risk in revealing it to him, but he had had no choice and for the time being, he appeared to be safe.   

 

After the initial bout of inflammation directly following the treatment, Gold was pleased to discover that the injection was so effective that at first it seemed quite miraculous.  He could walk almost normally  again and sleep at night without taking drugs or drink to dull the pain.  He traded his crutches for a cane and then didn’t even need that for a while.  With relief came new energy and clarity of mind.  He returned to his articling work in New York and once again renewed his search. 

 

David had warned him that the relief wouldn’t last and he’d probably need another injection in six months, but Gold chose to believe the change was permenant, until it clearly wasn’t.  By springtime he found himself on crutches again, taking a few days off articling to take the train back to Storybrooke.  His back weighed down with a knapsack of  heavy laws books, binders and just a spare pair of underwear for the trip, he swung down to the platform and made his careful way outside the station to catch a cab. 

 

He was just scanning the cars looking for a taxi  when he was shocked to see Mar-Mar leaning against a blue Mazda.  She held a sign with his name spelled out in gold glitter glue on blue kindergarten issue construction paper. 

 

Inexplicably he felt his eyes tear up and looked away.

 

“Gold!  Gold!” he heard her thin voice call out to him across the driveway and watched as she windmilled her arms frantically in his direction, in an effort to get his attention.  

 

“Mar-Mar, what are you doing here?”

 

“David said you were coming up!”

 

“Lovely sign.”

“I got bored during prep time,” she said with a shrug. “Hop in and give me those.”  Gold handed over his crutches.  He sank gratefully into the passenger seat as she stowed them in the back. 

 

“New car?”

 

“New-used but who cares about that—let’s hear all about the city!”

 

Gold smiled shyly and obliged. 

 

With time Gold finished his articling and graduated from law school.  He did not attend the ceremony, preferring to receive his diploma in the mail.  Even if he could have attended without worry, Mar-Mar and David were the only people he’d ever even briefly consider inviting.   He barely even spoke to anyone else outside a professional capacity.  They were his only connection to a human world outside himself and his mission and no matter how much he chided himself for the potential danger the connection presented, he wasn’t strong enough to sever it.  Somehow there was something about being with them that filled a void in him he’d never dared voice to anyone—a desire for friendship of a completely nonsexual nature, strange it should be with someone he’d once had sex with-- but still, there it was.  Friends who were just friends.   Their relationship was a carefully balanced sort of thing.  They made no demands on him for time or money or anything other than to share a seat at their table for food and stories.  David alleviated his pain.  Of course, Gold paid him for the medicine and the equipment and for performing the procedures, but not enough to make the risk of Dr. Nolan losing his vet license actually worth it—so why do it for Gold at all?   Pity?  Curiosity?  Good old fashioned altruism? 

 

It was hard for him to accept the fact that David and Mar-Mar Nolan, no matter how perverted they might be in the consensual seclusion of their marital bed, were simply just decent, open hearted people, and Gold who was completely unaccustomed to being trusted and treated kindly found himself unexpectedly charmed by it, his carefully built up defenses left in disarray.

 

With time and weather and the stress of frequent walking, his ankle worsened and the span between injections grew shorter.   

 

It was a hassle to go back and forth between Storybrooke and New York City so frequently.  Besides, life in New York was expensive and the town overcrowded with lawyers all hungry for jobs, most of them younger and better qualified than him. 

 

Luckily, shortly after he graduated, Storybrooke’s only lawyer in residence retired to Florida.  It was Mar-Mar’s idea that Gold come to town to take his place.  Few lawyers seemed interested in settling in such a small town, so far away from the most lucrative business.  The job would be his by default. 

 

Also, as it happened the PI  Gold had employed to track down Baelfire had located the family that had adopted his son at last.  The couple were adjunct professors currently employed in Syracuse working for the university. 

 

With his bad history in New York, Gold was keen to see the back of the city.  He’d never felt totally at ease there since the incident.  He never knew   He never knew, even in his new and unrecognizable life when and where he might run into someone he’d known from before.  There had been a time when a client came to visit the criminal law branch of the law office that he’d thought looked familiar—best not to think of that.  The universe’s arrows all seemed to point him in the same direction now… Storybrooke.   


	20. We Carry Our Prisons With Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this chaps a bit heavy in the angst department. What can I say, I've had similar thoughts relationship-wise myself recently. 
> 
> Also, if you're the one being quiet in the car, while leaving your partner to carry on the entire conversation, babbling like a dork, just to keep the two of you from feeling bored and pointless, what the heck is wrong with you?
> 
> End rant.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> XXXX

Gold sat beside Archie in his little compact car with the seat pushed as far back as it could go, his bad leg elevated on the dashboard, jolting him awake every time Archie went over a bump in the road. 

Archie glanced over at Gold each time he gasped or swore and occasionally when he didn’t. Eventually, compelled by sheer frustration he had to say something. “That’s a stupid way to sit.”

Gold grunted noncommittally.

“You’ll hurt yourself more that way.”

“So what do you suggest? Strap myself to the roof? ”

“Maybe the backseat? You could stretch out sideways.”

“I’m fine where I am.”

“Suit yourself, but feel free to change when we make a pit stop.” 

“We’re not making a pit stop!”

“You honestly expect me to drive there and back without going to the bathroom or grabbing a sandwich or cup of coffee?”

“Hmmm, okay maybe that was a little unreasonable.”

“Y’think? Je-SUS what’s wrong with you? ”

“I just want to get this over and done with. You can understand that, right?”

“I guess. Although why it can’t wait until you’re feeling better—“

“It can’t.” Gold clenched teeth as they hit a slight bump, “Fuck.” 

“And you still haven’t told me why.”

Gold just turned away and looked out the window. Despite his promise to tell Archie “everything” he spent the next half hour enroute to NYC in silence. Archie tried to bring him out, mentioning the traffic conditions and random news items, asking him what he thought about this or that, but all he got were single word answers. Eventually, he sensed that Gold had fallen asleep on him. As the little gray Toyota passed yellow line after yellow line Archie resigned himself to the truth—Gold had no intention of honouring his promise.   
Well, then fuck Gold and his beauty sleep then. In a moment of petulance, Archie gave the volume dial on the car stereo a savage twist—they were currently receiving Proud FM from Toronto, the gay radio station from Canada—playing some 90s dance mix. The loud sound irritated him, but he hoped it bugged Gold more. 

Archie hummed determinedly along to the words: “I believe in miracles, where you from, you sexy thing you…” It all sounded very disco-y beneath the beating electronica veneer, not that Archie was much of an expert in pop music. He preferred opera and classical symphonies instead. He chanced a look over to Gold who hadn’t changed position, head still leaning against the window, hair hanging over his eyes, apparently taking no notice of anything. 

Once more Archie questioned his own sanity. What were his motives for doing this again? Where was this relationship even going? Why sacrifice his time and exhaust himself driving all this way for someone who would never properly reciprocate? What sort of future could he have with a man like that anyway? Could he ever be truly happy with someone who’d always keep the better part of themselves hidden away? Hadn’t he had enough of secrets and lies living with his biological parents? Wasn’t his whole life now built on the philosify of being honest with himself and other people. What was being a psychologist about if not admitting the truths we all hide because we’re so afraid no one will like us, recognizing that those thoughts that are repellent and disgusting that we think no one else has, are surprisingly common?

How many people had he met in his practice running scared of the monsters they believed themselves to be, terrified to disclose the beasts inside and drag those uncharitable inclinations, secret weaknesses, fears, hurts and resentments, squirming out into the light. To Archie, his job was all about demystifying the terrors that plague the human mind, so people could live freely, outside the prisons we create for ourselves and part of that was helping unlearn the shame attached to urges and feelings that were perfectly natural and instinctual for all human beings. 

Even if you can’t change your situation, just being given that permission that it’s okay to feel the way you do, that’s it’s normal and makes sense and that you’re not alone, can help a little sometimes. 

He knew Gold and even if he didn’t know what the big secret he hid was, he knew in his heart was good and kind and felt sure that whoever it was he’d hurt in the past, they’d probably well deserved it and that the guilt he’d cared all these years was unnecessary. 

But he recoiled inwardly at saying these words to Gold. The other man, would probably just sneer and verbally hit back like a wounded animal in instinctive defense mode.

It disturbed Archie that he felt afraid of Gold now, not that he would physically hurt him mind—but that he’d withdraw his affection even more, burrow so deep inside himself that Archie wouldn’t ever be able to find him again. If he tried to tell Gold why it was over, would Gold even really listen to his reasons now?

Maybe it was thoughtless and cruel, but Malcolm Gold was not his patient. He, Archie deserved to come home to someone who let him relax, a balm for all the grief and thorny natures he had to deal with all day long, no matter how much his work interested. 

Only twice had Archie ever heard his friend refer to himself as crippled or a cripple—once in extreme frustration at being denied admission to some stupid theme park ride of all things and the other time in a strange moment of self-depreciating humour. 

It was a loaded word, one people unfortunately used casually all the time on TV and books without really understanding how it effected people. Archie never thought of Gold in those terms and most of the time he didn’t think Gold did either. Gold could do so many things no one else Archie ever met could-- from fixing antiques to evading laws with his clever mind. He knew so much about so many diverse topics—just his knowledge of all the ways you could touch a person to make them cum like a fucking geyser within seconds-- that alone as enough to put any other man or woman Archie’d ever met to shame. It seemed rather stupid and demanding to expect the poor man to be good at things so common place as walking and kickboxing on top of it. 

But now Archie was beginning to think that Gold really was crippled— not by anything visible to the outside world, but by something else. 

If Gold wanted to, he could take Archie on one of those Caribeann gay cruises he was always hinting at wanting to go on, or come with him to that beginner life drawing class at the community centre he was keen on. He could join Archie at the local film club meet-up or Pongo’s therapy dog training class. He could ask Archie to marry him or even just to move in. They could start talking about starting a family. The one time Archie began to tell Gold he’d been thinking for a long time about fostering a child, Gold’s blanket dismissal and odd distracted reaction were enough for him to shove it in the back of his mental closet alongside his suggestion that they go to Provincetown for Pride weekend and march together in the parade. 

There was no reason any of these things couldn’t happen that Archie could see. None of it was against the laws of physics, but always Gold said no. 

Archie could see now that Gold was bound so tightly to his routine, so scared to trust anyone else, to step outside his safe little circle and expose himself even the teensiest tiniest little bit-- 

How cold and lonely it must be for Gold, thought Archie and yet, how cold and lonely would it be for him to live alongside that, to live with someone seemingly content with their own company, with no desire to expand their circle, to engage with the world in any significant way other then to collect the month’s rent. Archie was not accustomed to that. He eneded more, deserved more. Would Gold’s sex and kindness be enough for him? Archie didn’t think so. 

And so, Archie told himself, unless something changed, this would be his last time with Gold. Archie would do this one last thing for him and then nothing more. He wouldn’t let himself be swayed, he would be firm and break it off now, before he entangled himself any further, spare both their feelings—although to be frank, he wondered if Gold really had any to begin with. 

It was only once he decided this, did Archie feel like crying. He tilted his head back a bit as he to keep the tears in, to prevent them from flowing down his cheeks. He took a Kleenex from the storage compartment between their two seats and wiped the drops away. He gave a sureptious sniff and looked over once again at Gold, wondering if his partner would notice anything amiss at all. 

No, nothing. Gold looked out the window, his face hidden by the curtain of his hair. 

And the song kept on playing, the beat relentless, but Archie would be damned if he would turn it down; “I believe in miracles.” Yeah right.


	21. Private Dancer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to the Full Monty... which somewhat inspired some of this.

The radio played that song. 

Why’d it have to be that song? Gold stared out the passenger side window and blew softly against the glass. It misted up and he made squiggles with his finger through the condensation on the glass in time to the music. Zig-zag, zig-zag. He could feel the rhythm of the bass now, pumping up the dashboard through twisted bone and sinew, could hear the music the way it sounded in the past, those ginormous pounding speakers beneath him, the feeling of the metal floor of the vibrating through the souls of his feet, bare and agile, the beat thrumming like a gigantic heart in his chest, the club’s green lasers lighting up the back of his skull, the smell of sweat and pot, stale beer and sex. 

“I used to be a good dancer,” said Gold out of nowhere.

Archie nearly swerved into the wrong lane, so shocked was he by Gold speaking after so much silence.

“Inevitably, you know, I’d hate it by the end of the night after two, three hours dancing at full tilt, but I still loved dancing. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but I was actually really good at it. About the only thing I’m naturally good at, I think. I never had lessons, just watched other people and felt the music. It’s expressive, you know, the way it makes you feel so free…you can just—just move your body and make other people feel something—like you’ve got a magic power, you know what I mean?”

Archie glanced over, but Gold’s gaze was focused out the window, not really seeing the passing cars or straggly trees on the sad little grass islands between the highway lanes. 

“Even when I didn’t have to do it for money or anything I still went out dancing. I just had to. I could go into the club feeling so angry and depressed, fucking disgusted with myself, too, and I’d dance and it was like all that negativity just moved through me, like just went down from my brain to my feet and out into the dance floor and I was clean and free again afterwards.” 

Not like now, he didn’t have to say, when the sadness and frustration just sat on his chest like a wet St. Bernard.

“Did you dance, erm, professionally?” asked Archie, whose entire dance experience could be encapsulated by a handful of events involving him in a ridiculous clip-on tie looking too tall in his too short trousers, watching couples, friends, singles and basically everyone else he knew whooping it up to pop tunes he didn’t know in either a haphazardly decorated high school gymnasium or tacky banquet hall wishing he’d brought a book. Anything to prevent the onset of terminal boredom or the well-meaning pitying conversation of passing teachers and other dull grown-ups. Needless to say the gay dance club experience had always struck too much terror in his heart to make it even remotely appealing. Archie preferred to enjoy his music quietly sitting down thank you very much. No uncouth gyrating for him, only the classical, refined strains of opera and symphony orchestra. Proud FM was a bit of a guilty pleasure, like the gossipy People magazines he only allowed himself to buy once a month, (but of course the online version was a different kettle of fish altogether). He liked to think of himself as above such things.

Of course Gold would have to have been some kind of pro dancer on top of every other sexy thing he was good at it, Archie grumbled inwardly, it was just so unfair. 

Though Archie did suddenly feel quite fond of the picture developing in his mind of Gold in Flamenco dancer’s pants—skin tight in all the right places, with those Cuban heeled shoes and a shirt open down to his narrow waist, twisting and turning to some serious Latin rhythm. He really did have such mobile hips. 

“Actually—“ said Gold shattering the illusion, “I was a cage dancer, with a fair bit of lap dance too and some private stuff thrown in, you know the way it is.”

“What?”

“You know cage dancing—“

“Wait—Like those go-go girls in the 60s at Studio 54 with those weird space boots and fake eyelashes and—“

“I did not wear go-go boots,” said Gold stiffly.


End file.
